CHICAGO _ The basketball inside the Chicago Bulls bubble has sometimes looked rusty, but that's to be expected for the first team activities since March. Otherwise, the three-week Bulls minicamp, which wrapped up Tuesday, has gone off without a hitch.
Players seem excited to be back on the court for the first time in six months. The new front office hired Billy Donovan as head coach and had a chance to evaluate players in person for the first time. The players got to experience a few team bonding activities. And most crucially, the Bulls avoided an outbreak of COVID-19.
To the NBA's credit, the virus has remained under control throughout bubbles in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., and elsewhere as the league wraps up the NBA Finals and eight individual markets _ the teams not invited to the restart _ held group workouts.
"The league basically just handed us the manual. It felt like they gave us a 'bubbles for dummies' book or something and we had to put it together," Chip Schaefer, the Bulls director of performance health, said with a laugh during a phone interview. "But it's no joke. The guidelines are quite strict, as they see fit, and we had to put it together and follow them."
Schaefer and Shaun Hickombottom, the Bulls senior manager of player and team services, took the lead in setting up a campus-like environment in two sites: the Advocate Center and a Chicago hotel.
Here's how the Bulls bubble came together.
