CHICAGO — Jaden Ivey took his time. He hit the training table, showered, ambled across the locker room, cuffed his socks and fastened every zipper and button until he felt some level of comfort. Uncomfortable questions awaited.
Just five games after the Chicago Bulls completed their trade-deadline fire sale, Ivey didn’t play in Thursday’s forgettable 110-101 loss to the Toronto Raptors. He believed it was his first career DNP-CD (Did Not Play — Coach’s Decision). The deadline moves by Bulls vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas left the team with six guards, an impractically crowded group even by Chicago’s standards. Ivey became the odd man out when the team returned to relative health.
Wes Unseld Jr. — acting as interim coach in place of Billy Donovan, whose father died recently — called Ivey’s healthy scratch “strictly a basketball decision.” He noted the difficulty of dealing with so much backcourt depth, saying that he wanted to push guards Josh Giddey and Tre Jones in their returns from injury. None of it sounded particularly aligned with what Karnisovas did at the deadline, an alleged pivot toward the development of a younger group of players.
“I talked to several guys this morning, and then I addressed the team about it, and it’s just a byproduct of where we are in our composition,” Unseld said.
Ivey, who turned 24 this month, is among the youngest of that group. Anfernee Simons, who turns 27 in June and is in the final year of his deal, tied for a team-high 31 minutes Thursday. Before Giddey and Jones returned, Ivey started several games. On Thursday, he was left to make sense of a situation that didn’t lend itself to sensibility.
“I don’t think it changes my character,” Ivey said. “Win, lose or draw. I’m here to do my job, glorify God.
“I don’t really think that it affects me that much, as far as not playing. I know that that’s why you guys are asking me these questions, because you think it affects me.”
The gaggle of reporters attempted to then explain that whoever found himself left out of such a cramped backcourt would’ve attracted the same crowd. But Ivey’s situation is unique: Of the guards on expiring deals, he’s the only restricted free agent who also happens to slot into the age-based timeline. Chicago seems incentivized to play him as much as any of its guards.
Ivey knew the difficulty presented by this roster imbalance. It didn’t seem like he quite knew that he’d take the fall for it.
“You gotta look at who’s on the roster,” he said. “This team has a lot of guards. So going into it, I mean, I’m kind of just thrown in.
“Whenever Coach needs me and calls my name, I’ll be out there and be able to play. But going into it, obviously getting traded, that’s what happens in the NBA.”
At different points during a 10-minute postgame spiel, Ivey seemed to deem any DNP-related issues worldly. He repeatedly referenced his faith Thursday night, underscoring the nature of the business with what felt like an uncharacteristic hint of cynicism.
“I don’t really trust the NBA setting,” Ivey said, asked if his impending restricted free agency impacts his approach to all this. “I trust the Lord.”
The NBA setting?
“When moves are made behind the scenes, trades and stuff,” Ivey said, “ I don’t trust that part of (it). I mean, you can’t trust it, because it’s not in your hands. So it’s not in my hands to make moves, or trade myself.”
As requests for clarity flew, Ivey said he was later told his DNP stemmed from “a series of things,” with apparent ongoing knee soreness among them. He had surgery on his right knee in October and suffered a season-ending broken left leg in January 2025. Ivey hasn’t been withheld from practice this week, nor was he listed on the injury report entering Thursday. He noted it’s something he’s dealt with “for years.”
“I don’t think it’s something that is gonna limit me or keep me from doing my job, ’cause I’m still able to go and play basketball,” Ivey said.
He then left a message for those holding their breath for the old Jaden Ivey, the high-flying blur of a guard whom the Detroit Pistons took with the fifth pick in the 2022 NBA Draft.
“I’m sure people can call it out — I’m not the same player I used to be,” he said. “(The knee soreness is) why. I’m not the J.I. I used to be. The old J.I. is dead. I’m alive in Christ no matter what the basketball setting is.”
Ivey’s 10-minute postgame availability was bewildering. It wasn’t just that Ivey, or whoever communicated it as a reason to Ivey, felt his knee soreness was noteworthy. But so many Bulls fans held the door open in the hope that the once explosive Purdue prospect would return to that version of himself. Ivey seemingly closed that door for them, coming to terms with his recovery and his sense of self.
After all the second-round picks Karnisovas dealt for, effectively wiping his hands of his original framework of the Bulls, this is the human cost of a restructure, of a squad that wasn’t built for cohesion, but instead to let the best assets win. Donovan and his staff remain wired to win, though now they’re doing it with a disproportionate amount of guards and a barren frontcourt.
This jumble breeds discomfort.
And Ivey, the first victim of the spillage of Chicago’s deadline activity, handled the subsequent discomfort the only way he knew how. But the concern stemmed from the fact that this roster’s imbalance forced Ivey to seek comfort so soon. And that it was Ivey, among the youngest of these guards, that wound up doing the explaining.
Maybe these Bulls will shuffle their rotation each night, and this will become a footnote. But if Thursday was any indicator, any thoughts that the Bulls will truly prioritize the development of youthful guards like Rob Dillingham and Ivey, particularly at full strength, seem more like prayers.