SAN FRANCISCO — Rob Dillingham isn’t shooting the ball right.
The Chicago Bulls know it. So does Dillingham. But coach Billy Donovan says there’s not much the team can do about his shot in the short term. It’s not an issue of time or work ethic or player development resources. The Bulls can’t work on Dillingham’s shot until he attends to a pair of ganglion cysts in his shooting wrist.
Donovan offered this explanation casually during a news conference before Tuesday’s 130-124 overtime win over the Golden State Warriors. He didn’t seem to realize this injury had been obscured from public knowledge for nearly five weeks. Or how the revelation factors into an increasingly catastrophic series of injury mishaps regarding the team’s highest-priority trade-deadline acquisitions.
“It’s nothing majorly serious, but he’s had some wrist issues that are going to need to get resolved in the offseason,” Donovan said. “He doesn’t feel right all the time shooting the basketball. I think that he’ll be fine once that clears itself up, but it’s been something that he’s been battling and dealing with.”
This was hiding in plain sight. Look closely enough in person at Dillingham’s shooting wrist, and the growth is visible. The cysts are harmless but greatly affect the guard’s range of motion, including the flexing and snapping motions necessary to take a jump shot.
Dillingham has taken to wearing a wrap — sometimes black, sometimes white — around the wrist. The bandaging provides a placebo effect at best, but at least it could help prevent an accidental burst during the natural contact of a game.
According to the Bulls, Dillingham arrived in Chicago at the trade deadline with the cysts in tow. Donovan said the medical team attempted a few rounds of injections, but that treatment was unsuccessful in curing the issue. The team never listed Dillingham on the injury report, ostensibly because the cysts — while painful and limiting his quality of play — never threatened his availability.
On the court, however, the issue is glaring. Dillingham shot a modest 33.8% from 3-point range as a rookie with the Minnesota Timberwolves. That plummeted to 28.8% over 47 games this season with the Timberwolves, and since the trade, he has made only 6 of 29 attempts (20.7%). He went 1-for-3 behind the arc against Golden State.
Maybe Dillingham’s shot is broken. Maybe it’s just a matter of waiting for the cysts to be drained or removed. Either way, the Bulls don’t have a path to accurately assess the source of the problem or determine whether it’s worth fixing.
Tuesday’s game was defined for both teams by the players who weren’t on the court. While the Warriors were missing stars Stephen Curry and Jimmy Butler, for the Bulls, the absence of key players — Isaac Okoro, Collin Sexton, Patrick Williams — was only one piece of a much larger puzzle.
Although the Bulls acquired seven players at the deadline, only four were under serious consideration as future assets: Jaden Ivey, Anfernee Simons, Sexton and Dillingham. Three of those players arrived in Chicago with significant injury issues.
Simons fractured his wrist in training camp with the Boston Celtics, an injury that lingered after briefly sidelining him at the start of the season. The injury flared back up six games into his tenure with the Bulls. He has missed the last eight games and remains sidelined with no clear timeline for a return. Simons traveled to San Francisco to rejoin the team, but Donovan said he’s no closer to suiting back up.
Even more mysterious is the condition of Ivey, who played more than 30 minutes in a handful of games before being listed as a “DNP – Coach’s Decision” on Feb. 19 against the Toronto Raptors, then undergoing a series of knee scans and being shut down to strengthen his left leg.
It’s clear Ivey still is recovering from the long-term effects of a nasty fibular break that occurred last season with the Detroit Pistons. What’s unclear is whether he will be able to return this season — or factor as an option for the Bulls in restricted free agency this summer.
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Ivey, Simons and Dillingham arrived early enough to undergo medical testing with the Bulls staff before the deadline passed, giving the team the opportunity to amend its deals. Yet the Bulls received no compensation for picking up the broken and battered goods of top Eastern Conference competitors like the Pistons and Celtics.
Sexton, by a stroke of bad luck, bruised a nerve after banging knees with an opponent in Sunday’s loss to the Sacramento Kings. It’s not expected to be a long-term injury, but it did keep him out of Tuesday’s game.
The Bulls had two clear objectives in the final 31-game stretch after the trade deadline: lose as many games as possible while assessing every member of the roster for a potential future in Chicago.
They’re on track to accomplish one of those goals, going 3-11 since the deadline. But the value of this talent evaluation window has been severely damaged by the lack of availability of the players they picked up. Even Donovan admitted he hasn’t had enough time to fully analyze the fit of players such as Ivey and Simons for a long-term future with the Bulls.
For now, the Bulls are left to plan their future around uncertainty.