The Chicago Bulls are facing a potential COVID-19 outbreak after star forward DeMar DeRozan on Monday became the third player in the last week to enter the league testing protocol.
DeRozan returned one positive test, but the Bulls have not received enough additional results to firmly diagnose him as a positive case. Coach Billy Donovan said before Monday night’s game against the Denver Nuggets at the United Center that DeRozan participated fully in the morning shootaround with his teammates before he was pulled into isolation in the afternoon.
Donovan said it could take one to two days to confirm DeRozan’s status.
The Bulls have not determined if DeRozan can travel with the team to road games in Cleveland and Miami this week. DeRozan’s positive result came on the same day he was named Eastern Conference Player of the Week after averaging 30.3 points in three Bulls victories.
Guard Coby White tested positive for COVID-19 on Wednesday, and forward Javonte Green tested positive Friday in New York, then drove home to Chicago to enter quarantine. Four Charlotte Hornets players — including LaMelo Ball, brother of Bulls guard Lonzo Ball — also tested positive after last Monday’s game against the Bulls at the United Center.
All three Bulls players must return two negative PCR tests within a 24-hour window to return to team activities.
The Bulls reinstated daily testing after White’s positive test. Donovan said players are being tested multiple times a day, and the coach got a test shortly before reporting to the United Center for Monday’s game.
Center Nikola Vučević tested positive in early November and spent 11 days in isolation before returning to team activities.
The entire Bulls roster received both shots of the COVID-19 vaccine. Although it doesn’t prevent individuals from contracting the virus, the vaccine limits most of the symptoms and severity of the disease. Vučević and White both reported mild symptoms similar to a cold, and Vučević has played his best basketball of the season in the weeks since returning from isolation.
“It’s pretty clear just from a national standpoint — forget the NBA — that people that are vaccinated are getting COVID,” Donovan said. “I don’t think anybody was under the premise that just because you’re going to be vaccinated that you’d have no chance of getting COVID. That’s been proven pretty much to be the case that you still have the possibility.
“The hope is by being vaccinated that maybe the symptoms aren’t as severe. ... So it’s just what we’re all going through.”
Donovan said he expects the NBA to increase its COVID-19 requirements after an uptick in positive tests around the league.
However, he doesn’t expect the league to suspend the season, although he said specific games could be postponed if too many players were sidelined to field a team.
“Our guys have done a good job following and doing what we’re asked to be done from the league and from the medical side,” Donovan said. “This time of year, there’s certainly been a spike in this, but I have not heard anything as it relates to them going into a situation of shutting down the league for a period of time.”
The Bulls played Monday night’s game without four key players: DeRozan, White, Green and Alex Caruso, who is sidelined for at least a week with a strained right hamstring.
Caruso attempted to play through the injury for the first eight minutes Saturday against the Brooklyn Nets before team doctors pulled him. Donovan said the guard received an MRI and treatment and will be re-evaluated in a week.
In the meantime, the Bulls will lean heavily on Vučević, Ball and Zach LaVine as the team faces an uncertain future with four sidelined players.
“We’ve had to deal with this for a good portion of the year, whether it’s been COVID or injuries,” Donovan said. “The guys that maybe had not been in the rotation have done a good job keeping up, so we’ll have to figure that out. We’re going to have different combinations and it’s players playing with each other that haven’t played with each other before.
“The way I look at it is this is the hand we’re dealt.”
