Bulls remain shorthanded as preseason continues
The Bulls had a lighter load when they flew to Oklahoma City for the second leg of the four game preseason.
Six players stayed home. Technically it was seven since the Bulls officially released power forward Noah Vonleh on Tuesday.
There was no official announcement from the team, but a few Twitter reports said Vonleh tested positive for COVID-19. This move essentially confirms that Vonleh wasn't expected to make the final roster anyway. The Bulls already had 15 players on guaranteed contracts and would have had to waive or agree to a buyout with someone for Vonleh to stick around.
Four players not making the trip to OKC have defined reasons. Garrett Temple has yet to be cleared after a positive COVID test and Denzel Valentine has a hamstring injury. Neither of those players have practiced yet.
Thad Young is out with a lower left leg infection and two-way player Adam Mokoka has yet to be cleared after arriving late from his home country of France.
That leaves two players with undefined absences, Tomas Satoransky and two-way player Devon Dotson. Those two played in the preseason opener, but not in the rematch with Houston. It seems reasonable to presume they were sidelined by a positive coronavirus test perhaps close contact with Vonleh, but there has been no official word.
Needless to say, three days on the road should be handled with caution by every NBA team.
"I'm confident we're going to stay safe," center Wendell Carter Jr. said. "Just continuing to keep your mask on, which I feel like is what everybody has to do. Not going out to certain restaurants. And when you do go out to the restaurants that they approve, we have a private room that's been disinfected before you get there.
"The hotel rooms are disinfected throughout. I feel like that's probably the only thing you can really do to make sure everybody stays safe. I feel like we have a pretty confident and pretty mature team. So I feel like we're going to do the things that we have to do to stay safe so we can play."
At one point during the baseball season, MLB told players they could not leave the team hotel without permission from the team's designated travel coordinator. NBA teams typically have shorter road trips, but there's still a lot of down time.
"I think the medical staff here has done a great job trying to educate our guys," coach Billy Donovan said. "But once you start traveling and start getting out and going to different places, you probably open yourself to being a little more susceptible."
Donovan wouldn't commit to using the same starting lineup as in the first two preseason games. The Bulls were essentially blown out from the opening tip by Houston in their first game, then used a big fourth quarter to win the rematch at the United Center.
Guards Zach LaVine and Coby White led the scoring on Sunday. The Bulls would like to see better shooting from Carter and Lauri Markkanen.
"What I'd like to get out of this game is, can we show growth?" Donovan said. "I thought in the first game we gave up a lot of uncontested 3s, we gave up a lot of drives to the basket. In the second game we were much better. Our defensive rating was much better, we did a better job contesting, we did a better job helping, we did a better job guarding the ball."
Twitter: @McGrawDHBulls