Bulls guard Jaden Ivey will miss at least the next two weeks with left knee soreness, Bulls head coach Billy Donovan announced Saturday.
The news comes two days after he was healthy and active against the Toronto Raptors but did not play. Although interim coach Wes Unseld called it a “basketball decision,” Ivey explained in his postgame comments that the apparent lack of explosiveness could be the result of knee soreness.
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Donovan, who returned to the team after the death of his father earlier this week, said Ivey has had his knee checked by doctors and will be re-evaluated in two weeks.
In four games since being acquired from the Detroit Pistons at the trade deadline, Ivey has averaged 28.8 minutes per game, 11.5 points, and shot 41.7% from the field. His jump shot looks solid, but he completely lacks the explosive first step that made him the No. 1 pick in the draft.
“He started getting more minutes in the first few games,” Donovan said. “His minutes were in the 30-plus minutes, and you could see he didn’t stop and start. He didn’t have that explosiveness, like you saw when you watched him play. But, he was allowed to play again, and obviously, he played minutes in Detroit.
“But he wasn’t necessarily complaining about knee soreness when he came in, and by the time he was communicating with the medical staff, the knee soreness started to show up. So I think as they try to run some tests on him and examine him, they feel more now that they have to make him stronger.”
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It’s been a challenging road for Ivey last year. Last January, Ivey fractured his fibula and underwent season-ending surgery. Ivey underwent arthroscopic surgery before the 2025-26 season, causing him to miss the first 15 games of the season.
Ahead of the Bulls’ 126-110 loss to the Detroit Pistons on Saturday night, head coach JB Bickerstaff, who has spent more than a year with the Bulls’ new combo guard, provided some perspective.
“He’s been through a rough patch,” Bickerstaff said. “When he was with us, he played at an extremely high level right out of the gate. There was one game where he got injured and then he struggled. It’s not easy to be able to come back from an injury like that. You have to do it with a team that’s established itself in a different way and now you’re trying to find your rhythm and not try to step on anybody’s toes.
“Then he got injured at the beginning of the year and that put him in a difficult position. So it wasn’t an easy situation for him, but I think from a team standpoint, a personal standpoint, he handled it really well. But I think a new opportunity for him would be good.”
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Ivey played the first four games with the Bulls after the Feb. 5 trade deadline, but he didn’t look like himself. While he hasn’t looked the same all season long as he did when he injured his anterior fibula, it’s unclear if he has further degraded since leaving Detroit.
“Even after the game against Toronto, that was our decision as a staff,” Donovan said. “But we did raise questions with the physical. I think the medical also felt, after the first four games, that he wasn’t moving very well. And then I think that’s when we probably started talking to him a little bit. Not me, but the physical. I think he started saying he had some knee soreness. I think some of the knee soreness was a lack of strength.”
The Bulls will now use the next few weeks to get him healthy, the idea being that adding strength to the surrounding muscles can alleviate soreness and help him regain some explosiveness.
“When they tested his strength, he had some muscle weakness,” Donovan said. “Then what happens is when there’s weakness there, you end up with knee soreness. So it’s just a matter of him having to get that leg back.
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“He’s able to play, but you always worry a little bit when a guy has underlying weaknesses and he can’t start and stop. That could lead to bigger things and become a bigger problem. So the idea of stopping him and working on his strength is a way to try to get him back into shape, one so he can play better and two so he feels better because I don’t think he feels good.”
In the unlikely event that Ivey is ready to leave after the re-evaluation period, he will miss eight games, including Thursday’s DNP game. That would give the Bulls 19 games to evaluate his long-term potential with the team as they formulate their summer plans.
“We anticipate a full recovery, but we don’t know when,” Bickerstaff said. “So, for him to trust it and trust it, right? That happens with injuries too, especially when you’re that explosive and your athleticism is so unique, you have to find that trust again. So that’s one of those things where we expect a full recovery, but you never know the timeline on these things.”
Whether he returns this season or next, the Bulls, like the Pistons, believe he will regain his former form.
“I think there’s a sense that if you can get more strength back, he can certainly get back to where he was athletically,” Donovan said.