Bulls guard Zach LaVine wasn’t a late scratch for a trade; it was just a toe injury

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Bulls guard Zach LaVine was a late scratch before Monday night’s 115-108 overtime victory against the Hornets. Arturus Karnisovas, executive vice president of basketball operations, is with the Bulls on their current two-city road trip. Trade rumors continue to swirl around the team.

To keep the conspiracy theorists from getting any wild ideas, LaVine took off his left sock to show the injury that kept him from playing.

“I’ve got a purple toe right now,” he said with a laugh. “My toe looks like the Minnesota Vikings.”

It was LaVine’s fifth missed game this season. The two-time All-Star was hurt during Saturday’s victory over the Bucks.

“It felt like Brook [Lopez] stepped on it, but I’ll be OK,” LaVine said. “They tried to put a hole in it to extract the blood, but I didn’t want to infect it, so give it a few more days and see y’all in D.C. I’m not going to miss two games in a row, so see y’all in D.C.”

The Bulls play the Wizards on Wednesday night.

With LaVine in street clothes and guard Ayo Dosunmu out with a strained calf, coach Billy Donovan started the usual crew of Patrick Williams, Nikola Vucevic, Coby White and Josh Giddey against the Hornets, with Julian Phillips in LaVine’s place.

LaVine was expected to receive serious treatment for 24 hours before seeing how the toe feels during the shootaround Wednesday morning.

“It impacted his nail, his joint, so he kind of went through shootaround [Monday] to see how he felt and couldn’t get much relief,” Donovan said. “He’s got pretty significant soreness.”

LaVine leads the Bulls in minutes with 33.4 per game, as well as scoring with 22 points per game. He’s shooting 49.9% from the field and 44.7% from three-point range. So, no, he isn’t being traded. At least not yet.

Look over here, free agents

The Bulls aren’t likely to be buyers as the Feb. 6 trade deadline nears, but the hope is they’ll eventually get to a place where they’re looking to add serious talent. Their new up-tempo style of play with more three-point shooting is a potential selling point.

“I think it’s attractive because it’s kind of moving to the modern-day NBA,” White said. “The pace we play at, the amount of threes we shoot, the amount of freedom everybody has, I think any basketball player would want to play in this system. Who doesn’t want to play fast, get up and down, get open shots, be able to attack in transition and then have the freedom to make plays offensively where everybody gets the ball and has opportunities? I think it has really been working for us.”

Smith’s absence short

The Bulls got some size back in the middle against the Hornets as 6-10 Jalen Smith returned from a sprained ankle. He missed just one game with the injury and has missed four in total this season.

Smith has been Vucevic’s backup at center, but Donovan also has experimented with playing both at the same time.