Bulls' Noah (shoulder) to return against Wizards
CHICAGO — Chicago Bulls center Joakim Noah will play Monday night against the Washington Wizards after missing almost a month with a slight left tear in his left shoulder.
“Jo will be back in the lineup tonight,” Bulls head coach Fred Hoiberg said after Monday’s shootaround.
Noah, who originally suffered the injury in a Dec. 21 loss to the Brooklyn Nets and has missed the past nine games, has taken contact in two consecutive days of practice and Hoiberg sounds confident that he is ready to play. Noah will once again join the Bulls’ second unit.
“We’ll ease him back in,” Hoiberg said. “No actual minute restrictions per se, but we’ll be a little bit careful with him out there.”
Hoiberg also acknowledged that Noah’s return will force some rotation changes for the Bulls. Notably, with rookie Bobby Portis entrenched in the rotation, there will be players who will not get as many minutes with Noah returning.
“We have talked, we’ve talked to our guys,” Hoiberg said. “We’ve played nine the last few games, we’ll probably get back to playing 10. But yeah, it’s obviously going to cut into some players’ minutes and a lot of that will just be by feel and how the flow of the game is going.”
This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service – if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers.
