CHICAGO – The Chicago Bulls roster looks a lot different than it did just a couple of months ago. The Bulls traded away Zach LaVine in February, and they received Tre Jones, Kevin Huerter and Zach Collins in exchange. Since then, the Bulls have been able to experiment with new lineups, and they plan on doing that for the remainder of the season to see what works best. In fact, there could be an interesting new strategy implemented down the road that involves Nikola Vucevic.
Nikola Vucevic has been battling an injury, but he returned to the lineup for the Bulls on Monday night against the Indiana Pacers after missing the last seven games. Zach Collins has done a good job picking up the slack, and there is a chance that we see both of the bigs play together in the future.
“It's been challenging, just because, when those three guys came in, when Zach [Collins] came in, he missed that back-to-back, because those guys got acclimated,” Bulls head coach Billy Donovan said to the media on Monday. “Then he came in and sat out, didn't really play too much. Then all of a sudden, Vooch [Nikola Vucevic] goes down. So Vooch [Nikola Vucevic] is out, Patrick [Williams] is out, Lonzo [Ball] goes out. We have all these guys out, and you don't have any practice time to work on that [two big men in the lineup]. We have to look at, are there teams we could potentially play that we need two bigs?”
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The Bulls are taking any potential lineup into consideration, but there is a lot that goes into each personnel decision. Billy Donovan has a lot to think about in terms of Nikola Vucevic and Zach Collins playing together.
“It's something we need to look at,” Donovan continued. “The only apprehension I would have with that would be: does it get in the way stylistically of how we've played? I don't know that, and I also don't want to pass judgment on those three guys [Vucevic, Collins and Jalen Smith] that two of the three can't play together without even potentially looking at some of it in practice or a game presents itself. I don't see us playing extended minutes like that, but I do see opportunities for that to happen.”
At this point, it looks like the Bulls will probably make the play-in tournament as the 10 seed. If they actually want to make some noise in the postseason, however, they might need to change things up. Who knows, maybe Nikola Vucevic and Zach Collins on the floor at the same time could provide the team an important spark.
