Bulls' Carter: 'I hate the label of being injury-prone'
As a rookie, it was a torn ligament in his thumb. Last year, a high ankle sprain. Then in practice last week, a knee to the quad. That will keep Bulls center Wendell Carter Jr. out for at least a month.
All three injuries can be attributed to bad luck. But that doesn't stop the number of games missed from rising.
"I hate the label of being injury-prone or always injured and things like that," Carter said Wednesday. "So that gets kind of tough."
Carter has already missed three games with the latest injury. Following an MRI, Carter's prognosis is to be reevaluated after four weeks.
"It's definitely frustrating just knowing that I do everything in my power just to make sure I avoid the injuries that I know I have 90% control over," he said. "And then that other 10%, I can't really control them."
The injury happened in practice last week and Carter said he knew right away it was going to be bad.
"We were playing 5-on-5 and I did a screen and roll," he said. "I was going at a pretty good pace, rolling hard because that was one of the emphasis we had in practice and I was looking back, looking for the ball and kind of just ran into Denzel (Valentine's) knee.
"The trainers and doctors, they said he just kind of hit me in the perfect spot, like right above my knee. I thought I did something (worse). I was on the ground for a while."
So the starting center spot was passed to second-year pro Daniel Gafford. He had been playing well on the second-team, but admitted he hasn't handled the jump in competition all that well yet.
The Bulls won the first time out against Charlotte, but the following night Anthony Davis came home and scored an easy 37 points against the Bulls defense, while the Lakers won in a blowout. The next game against Boston also went poorly for the Bulls.
"The last past couple of games, I've been a bit stuck in the mud, really," Gafford said. "I'm working on getting out of that funk right now, it's a little bit of a bump that I'm trying to get over.
"Coming off the bench before, I feel like I came in and did what I had to do. I gave guys energy. I came in, I played great defense, I blocked shots, I got stops, I kept guys in front of me. Just with this starting stuff, I've got to really lock in more onto the task at hand."
Gafford got into foul trouble early against the Lakers. In the Boston game, he played just 11 minutes as the Bulls struggled to keep Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum out of the paint.
After matching up against Davis, Gafford said he learned there are NBA big men that play like really big point guards.
"At first, I was a little jittery, I'm not going to lie to you," Gafford said. "That's Anthony Davis. But when it came to putting both of my feet on that court, I locked in. I was ready for anything. I took the challenge. It didn't go the way I wanted, but I still came out and fought, in my opinion."
The Bulls still have two more centers in reserve. Cristiano Felicio and Luke Kornet have gotten minimal playing time this season, but Felicio did get the call to play seven minutes against the Lakers.
"You're going to have to possibly look at Cris in that group," coach Billy Donovan said. "You're going to have to look at Thad (Young) there and Lauri (Markkanen) there. There may be matchups for us where playing Lauri and Thad together, we may not have enough length and physical size and presence up front.
"There may be some lineups that maybe we need Gaff out there, we need Cris out there. It could be a variety of different things, but I think that we're going to have to be prepared to have significant and different rotations based on matchups and who we're playing against."
The Bulls were scheduled to play at Memphis on Wednesday, but since that game was postponed due to COVID-19 concerns with the Grizzlies, they'll be off until hosting Portland on Saturday.
Dotson joins G-League:
The Bulls assigned two-way player Devon Dotson to the Canton Charge, which allows him to go to the G-League bubble and get some game action. He could be brought back to the Bulls at any time if needed.
Twitter: @McGrawDHBulls