Chicago Bulls guard Lonzo Ball revealed the extent of his knee injury during a press conference on Tuesday, and it doesn’t sound good.
Ball, who missed the final two months of the 2021-22 NBA season, is expected to undergo arthroscopic debridement in his left knee Wednesday, and described how difficult his everyday life has been.
“Literally, I really can’t run. I can’t run or jump,” Ball said, per NBC Chicago. “There’s a range from, like, 30 to 60 degrees when my knee is bent that I have, like, no force and I can’t, like, catch myself. Until I can do those things I can’t play. I did rehab, it was getting better, but it was not to a point where I could get out there and run full speed or jump. So surgery is the next step.”
“It’s every day,” Ball said of the pain. “Even going up stairs and stuff, it’s still painful.”
When asked about the surgery, Ball did his best to describe the procedure. “From my understanding they’re going in there to see what it is because it’s not necessarily showing up on the MRI,” Ball explained. “But it’s clear that there’s something there that’s not right. So they’re going to go in, look at it, and whatever needs to be done is going to be done.’’
Ball went on to say that, shortly after the initial surgery, there were “certain days and it would be fine,” however when he participated in “real basketball activities” he “just couldn’t do it.”
“For me, this will be my third surgery, so this time around I really don’t want to rush anything,” he said. “I think, like last time, I wanted to get back to the playoffs and stuff, and I thought — we all thought — that was going to be the case and unfortunately it wasn’t. So this time we need to just take it as slow as we need to take it and come back 100 percent.”
Ball played in just 35 games for the Bulls last season, averaging 13 points, 5.4 rebounds and 5.1 assists per game. Ball’s season came to an end after the guard suffered a Jan. 14 meniscus tear, which forced him to miss the rest of the regular season.
