LaVine shows commitment by playing through back spasms originally appeared on NBC Sports Chicago
Zach LaVine is hurting. He’s also still playing.
“Played the last two games with back spasms,” LaVine said via Zoom Thursday night following the Chicago Bulls’ overtime loss to the Raptors. “I’m just trying to help us win.”
Nevertheless, following a 42-minute effort that kicked off the Bulls’ brutal stretch of four games in five nights and seven in 10, LaVine admitted his availability for Friday’s game in Indiana is to be determined.
“It hurts. That’s what happens when you play a 42-minute game with back spasms,” LaVine said. “I’ll see how I feel in the morning.”
By now, two things are well documented about LaVine: He’s going to try to play through anything he can. And he’s consistently either glum or terse following losses.
Both stances are admirable.
A common refrain from LaVine is that he’s missed enough games in his career, a nod to the torn ACL he suffered five years ago.
But there’s a larger reason why LaVine plays through bumps and bruises, including a recent stretch where he played through knee swelling before finally succumbing to an MRI exam and a five-game absence. He’s about the team and winning.
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“Any time on the court I can spend, if it’s not scoring-wise, I thought I could be able to try to help the team win,” he said.
His teammates appreciate this. It’s one of the many reasons LaVine is held in such high regard throughout the franchise.
“Obviously, it tells us a lot about Zach,” Nikola Vučević said. “Playing through back spasms is not easy. It limits you a lot. Just because you don’t have that freedom of movement, especially in the back. That’s a big part of your body, especially when you play basketball.
“I think it was bothering him a lot, especially on the offensive end trying to score and be aggressive. It speaks a lot about his commitment to winning and to this team. Obviously, even him maybe not being 100 percent helps us a lot. We appreciate him being out there.”
LaVine would’ve much rather been fielding questions about his second straight All-Star appearance following a victory instead of a tough road loss. But he still acknowledged the growth of the franchise.
Last season, LaVine’s first All-Star appearance marked the franchise’s first since Jimmy Butler in 2017. The selection was a celebration for an organization that hadn’t extracted itself from the full rebuild it undertook by trading Butler following that All-Star appearance.
Now, DeMar DeRozan is headed to Cleveland as an All-Star starter to play alongside LaVine, who earned a coaches-selected reserve spot. Ayo Dosunmu will be in the Rising Stars challenge. And Billy Donovan and his staff could be coaching one of the teams, a nod to the Bulls dueling the Heat for the conference’s best record by the Sunday cutoff date.
“It means a lot any time you get honored in that way,” LaVine said. “Lotta hard work. It’s an honor to go be there with my teammates in the All-Star game with DeMar, and Ayo in the Rising Stars game. Hopefully we can get Billy a couple more wins going into the break and him and the staff can coach us out there. I think that will be special.”
Tough loss or not, this season is shaping up to be that.
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