(670 The Score) Bulls center Wendell Carter Jr. is returning from his right quad contusion earlier than expected.
Carter will be available and is set to play when Chicago visits Indiana on Monday evening, coach Billy Donovan said. Carter suffered the injury when he took a knee from teammate Denzel Valentine in a collision in practice on Jan. 20. Six days later, the Bulls ruled Carter out for the next four weeks, but he’s now returning just shy of the three-week mark. Carter isn’t on a minutes limit but initially won’t have as heavy a workload as he had previously. He was averaging 26.9 minutes per game before the injury.
“Guys are excited and happy that he’s back,” Donovan said. “But I also think that, I just don’t want even for our team to expect him to be where he was before he got injured. This is going to take a little bit of time. Whatever he was playing minute-wise, 28, 32, I’m not even sure what the total number was, he’s certainly not going to be back to that tonight. That’s not going to happen. So we’ve got to slowly get him back to where he was.”
Carter, 21, is averaging 12.8 points and 8.0 rebounds while shooting 53.3% in 14 games this season. Carter has been injury prone, as he played 44 of 82 games as a rookie and then 43 of 65 games in the pandemic-altered 2019-’20 season.
“He worked hard to get himself back,” Donovan said. “Obviously, he’s battled different things throughout the course of his career and this was one of those things. Just taking a significant knee to his thigh there was really, really pretty severe and really, really tough to get back sooner than what he was able to. But he worked hard to get himself ready. So I think our guys are certainly excited to have him back. But again, we’ve got to compete and play well together as a team. It can’t be a situation where it’s, ‘OK, Wendell is back, everything is going to be fine.’ I don’t think that can be the case at all.”
Cody Westerlund is a sports editor for 670TheScore.com and covers the Bulls. Follow him on Twitter @CodyWesterlund.