The hotel guest list for the Bulls’ traveling party just added two.
Coach Billy Donovan said on Thursday that both rookie Noa Essengue and guard Coby White would be making the back-to-back road trip that starts in Milwaukee on Friday before a showdown with Cleveland a day later.
Reinforcements?
Not really, but some added hope for a team that sits all alone atop the Eastern Conference with a 6-1 record.
For Essengue, who was recalled from the G League Windy City Bulls, he’ll be around as a just-in-case option with two games in two days. For White, who has yet to play this season due to a strained calf, it is a sign that there is finally some positive progress in his effort to return to play.
“I feel good physically. No setbacks,” White said. “I’ve been running a lot, and a lot, and a lot, so it’s been good just trying to stay with my conditioning. I’ve been pushing it just to build the tolerance in my calf, so it’s been good.”
The concern is White has been at this stage in the rehab/ramp-up period before. It didn’t end well.
After initially injuring the calf in August, the Bulls and White took a very deliberate approach to getting him back, and with good reason. First, the league has been plagued with calf strains that have turned into more serious injuries — see Tyrese Haliburton and Jayson Tatum. Second, White is an unrestricted free agent after this season and made the decision to bet on himself by not taking a Bulls extension.
The Sun-Times reported that both sides have stayed very amicable throughout, and both want to get a deal done as soon as free agency opens up in July. It will come down to asking price.
Until then, however, it comes down to White first recovering and getting back on the court.
The original timetable was late in the preseason schedule, but when he did get in a full practice before the start of the regular season, he felt tightness in the area so was backed off. The last few weeks have been about getting him ramped up once again to play the run-and-gun up-tempo offense that Donovan has unleashed on the rest of the league.
“It wasn’t a re-strain or anything like that,” White said. “It was just like a minor setback, so this time they wanted me to go a little longer and build the tolerance in my calf.”
White said he has been playing three-on-three, two-on-two and working individually with the developmental coaches, and that’s a key reason for bringing him on the trip, so he can continue to get those workouts.
The Bulls will have three full days of practice starting next Thursday, and that will be the target date for White to get back to full-contact live scrimmages.
If he has no setbacks, he could make his season debut the week of Nov. 17, when the Bulls travel to the West Coast and play five games in seven days.
That also means Donovan will need to figure out how to get a 20-point scorer back in his starting lineup eventually.
In all likelihood, White will come off the bench so the Bulls can control the minutes restriction he will undoubtedly be under, then he’ll return to the starting unit once he gets his conditioning up. The bad news? Tre Jones, who has been so good, will be the odd man out. The good news? Jones joins a bench that is already overwhelming opposing teams.
“Probably nobody picked us to be where we are right now,” White said of what he’s been witnessing in street clothes so far this season. “We come out there every night and we play to win, and we’ve got a team of guys that are really good basketball players.”
And at least one more on the way.