Bulls guard Jaden Ivey will miss at least the next two weeks with left knee soreness, the team announced Saturday.
The news comes two days after he was healthy and active against the Toronto Raptors but did not play. And though interim coach Wes Unseld called it a "basketball decision," Ivey explained in his postgame remarks that the noticeable lack of explosion could be a product of soreness in his knee.
Billy Donovan, who returned to the team following the death of his father earlier in the week, said Ivey had his knee checked out by a doctor and will be reevaluated in two weeks.
In four games since being acquired from the Detroit Pistons at the trade deadline, Ivey scored 11.5 points in 28.8 minutes per game, shooting 41.7 percent from the field. His jumper has looked solid, but he completely lacked the explosive first step that made him a top pick in his draft class.
"He started to get more minutes in the first few games," Donovan said, "his minutes were in the 30s, and you could just see he wasn't stopping and starting. He didn't have that explosiveness that I felt like you saw when you watched him play. But again, he was cleared to play, and he played, obviously, minutes in Detroit.
"But he did not come in necessarily complaining about any knee soreness, that had just started to come up a little bit as he communicated with the medical guys. So I think as they try to do some testing on him and then get it looked at, it was just more that they feel right now, they've got to get him a lot stronger."