MINNEAPOLIS — Josh Giddey polished off all the rust before he took the court at the Target Center.
Eleven games and 25 days had passed since the guard last suited up for the Chicago Bulls after a hamstring strain pulled the guard out of the rotation. But if Giddey felt any lingering awkwardness from his month away, he didn’t show it in Thursday’s 120-115 win over the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Giddey missed his first three attempts from behind the 3-point arc before he finally gave up the shot altogether in the second half. But his bounce off the dribble returned almost immediately, empowering the guard to carve his path downhill to score 18 points in less than 13 minutes in the first half — 10 of which were created in the paint.
Although his scoring cooled in the second half, Giddey’s impact couldn’t be denied. The guard sprayed the ball around the court for six assists. And when shots stopped falling in the fourth, Giddey found a way to force the issue to the free-throw line, where he scored nine of his 21 points.
“I felt good,” Giddey said. “It felt like normal basketball. When I got out there tonight, it was nothing new. … I didn’t feel rusty. It didn’t feel like I’d been out too long.
Due to a strict limit on his playing time, Giddey did not start. Coach Billy Donovan said the medical team set Giddey’s minutes restriction at 24 minutes; he ultimately went 2 minutes, 2 seconds over that guideline. Holding Giddey out of the starting lineup almost allowed the Bulls to retain their two-big rotation — which features centers Jalen Smith and Nikola Vučević — without sacrificing the defensive presence of Matas Buzelis and Isaac Okoro.
The Timberwolves can present a defensive nightmare for the Bulls — a dueling center duo balanced by high-level shooting guards, all revolving around the weighty gravitational pull created by Anthony Edwards. While the Bulls still leaned on hefty minutes from Smith — who scored 17 points — he struggled to handle his defensive matchup with Julius Randle, who put the smaller center on skates in the half-court on course to scoring 30 points.
It quickly became obvious the Bulls couldn’t survive when Edwards — who finished with 20 points — occupied the court with any of their non-defensive guards, relying heavily on Okoro and Ayo Dosunmu to handle one of the toughest defensive assignments in the league. But the Bulls opted to close without any of their defensive wings on the court, opting to keep Buzelis out of the closing rotation for the second time in two weeks.
After falling behind by 14 points in the first half, the Bulls took control in the second and led until the final seven minutes. The Timberwolves began to sling 3-pointers and slam dunks, but the Bulls took those punches on the chin, holding off the onslaught by forcing second-chance points and drawing fouls.
White slid into the path of Randle with 2:17 to play in the fourth quarter, drawing a charge that fully deflated the Timberwolves’ attempts to hold their rally. It took nearly two more minutes for the Bulls to regain the lead off a fast-break layup from Tre Jones, who scored 12 points in a hometown return.
“There was a real resiliency by the group,” Donovan said. “It started to get away from us. We got down by maybe five after being up, but we kind of kept grinding the game and kept trying to make plays.”
Giddey’s return reunified the Bulls around their primary starting rotation — and, most importantly, reunited the guard with Coby White. This duo was meant to serve as the primary catalyst for the Bulls offense. But before Thursday, Giddey and White had played together in only 16 total games, which accounted for just more than one-third of the season. They had tallied only 300 minutes on the court together as a result.
Without context, that might seem like a decent chunk of minutes.
“Hey, that sounds like a lot low-key,” White joked after Sunday’s blowout win over the Brooklyn Nets.
But in comparison, Giddey played nearly twice as much with every other starter — 410 more minutes with Vučević, 242 more minutes with Buzelis and 218 more minutes with Okoro.
The Bulls have posted a net minus-2.4 rating this season. That number improves slightly to minus-0.7 with Giddey and White on the court. Neither player is a megawatt star like Edwards — Donovan acknowledged as much before the game — but these are clearly the two best players on the Bulls roster.
The Bulls always will be better off with that duo on the court. And White feels his game is elevated with his partner in crime back in the rotation.
“He just makes the game easier — not just for me, but for everybody,” said White, who led the Bulls with 22 points. “His ability to put pressure on the rim is something that we’ve been missing. He’s the engine to our team.”
Despite the relatively long absence, Giddey experienced an ideal road to recovery. He did not experience pain or setbacks at any point in his ramp-up process and went through Thursday’s game without incident. Now, the guard can focus on the next step — redeeming his season after an 11-game disruption.
Before the injury, Giddey was making a strong case for a first All-Star selection. While he doesn’t rank in the top 25 of the league in any category, he flirts with a triple-double every night by averaging 19.2 points, nine assists and 8.9 rebounds. His seven triple-doubles rank behind only Nikola Jokić, who has 16.
But an ill-timed injury can derail even the best All-Star campaign. Giddey was not named to the All-Star starting lineup and is considered an outlier to be selected as a reserve in the Eastern Conference. Coaches select reserves from a list based on an initial wave of fan, player and media voting.
“I think, with the way he’s played, certainly he would deserve strong consideration,” Donovan said. “(For voters) it is kind of out of sight, out of mind. It’s been 10 or 11 games that he’s missed. That may be something that contributes to it. But I think if you look at his body of work up to that point in time, he certainly played at a really, really high level.”