Chicago Bulls: 4 biggest negatives at halfway point of 2019-20 season

3. More injuries to key players

Up until the turn of the calendar year, the Chicago Bulls actually remained fairly fortunate in terms of their injury luck. The Bulls tend to be one of the worst teams in the NBA in terms of managing injuries, and their luck year in and year out in this department just is horrible.

Last season, the Bulls found then second-year power forward Lauri Markkanen out just a handful of days into Training Camp. He wound up missing time until the month of December. Markkanen did just suffer an ankle sprain, but it didn’t cause him to miss any games. That’s good news as long as he’s able to remain relatively healthy and productive down the stretch.

Just nine games into the 2019-20 regular season, the Bulls did manage to get their starting small forward injured. Otto Porter Jr. suffered what wound up to be a hairline fracture on his foot and he has not returned to action since the nine game mark. Porter Jr. and fellow small forward Chandler Hutchison both only played in nine games this season before both suffered various serious injuries.

Both Hutch is back in the mix now. He’s not the problem on the injury front at the moment.

The worst of the injury news of late was the ankle sprain that second-year center Wendell Carter Jr. suffered in the loss to the Dallas Mavericks earlier this month. WCJ was in the midst of a year of improvement during his sophomore campaign. But that came to a grinding halt when it was announced that he would miss at least four-to-six weeks while recovering from this ankle injury.