Bulls notes: Ball, Rose, Dosunmu, LaVine

On his podcast, the WAE Show (Twitter video link), Bulls guard Lonzo Ball said he plans to compete in two of the team's final three preseason contests. As Julia Poe of The Chicago Tribune notes (via Twitter), that means Ball is expected to make his preseason debut either next Monday at Milwaukee or Wednesday against Minnesota.

It's been a long road back for Ball, who missed the last two and a half seasons due to a knee injury that required three surgeries. The former No. 2 overall pick will be a free agent next summer as his $21.4 million contract expires.

Here are a few more notes from Chicago:

• Former NBA MVP Derrick Rose announced his retirement as a player last month. On Friday, the Bulls announced they would host a “Derrick Rose Night” on Jan. 4 against the Knicks. However, according to Poe of the Chicago Tribune, the team will not remove its No. 1 jersey during the halftime ceremony. Still, as Poe notes, no player has worn that jersey number since Rose's departure from the Bulls in 2016, so it's possible the Chicago native will see his jersey hanging in the rafters of the United Center in the future.
• The Bulls starting lineup – Josh Giddey, Coby White, Zach LaVine, Patrick Williams And Nikola Vucevic – doesn’t inspire much confidence on defense. Joe Cowley of the Chicago Sun-Times suggests that one solution could be to rule LaVine out early Ayo Dosunmuwhat the Bulls have done in recent seasons DeMar DeRozan. Dosunmu would provide a point-of-attack defense that works with the other four starters, and staggering LaVine's minutes would allow him to serve as the primary scorer with the reserves, Cowley notes.
• Head coach Billy Donovan According to Cowley, LaVine appears to be fully recovered from a foot injury that limited him to 25 games last season. “I think he practiced really wellDonovan said. “I don't think I've been able to say that in the last few years, and I don't think it was necessarily because he didn't want to train well. I think he was often coming off an injury. When I saw him in September and part of August, I felt like it was as good as I've seen him physically in a few years.”