Alex Caruso of the Chicago Bulls will be out for six to eight weeks as he undergoes wrist surgery.
The NBA guard suffered a fractured right wrist during the Bulls versus Milwaukee Bucks game on January 21. Caruso’s right arm got tangled with Grayson Allen’s as the former attempted to perform a layup in the third quarter, forcing Caruso to aggressively land on the floor on his right wrist. Allen was given a flagrant 2 foul and ejected from Friday night’ game. The injury did not seem grave last week as the X-rays did not show anything serious, but the tone of the Bulls and Caruso’s agent, Greg Lawrence, have changed.
“I expect the league will take into consideration not only what was a dangerous, unnecessary, and dirty play on Alex Caruso that caused this significant injury, but also the offending players’ own history,” Lawrence said via ESPN. “This was a cheap shot on an airborne, defenseless player that resulted in a broken bone that will need to be surgically repaired and will cause Alex to miss at least two months of the season.”
Caruso called the Allen’s action “bullsh*t” after the game and shared that the Bucks player did not check on him following the fall. ”Dude just grabbed me out of the air,” he said. “It’s kind of bullsh*t. I don’t know what else you can do about it. I’m just glad that I didn’t have any major scary injuries right away.”
Bulls coach Billy Donovan also spoke on the danger of the foul and reminded everyone of Donovan’s similar antics during his time at Duke University. “For Alex to be in the air and for [Allen] to take him down like that, he could’ve ended his career,” Donovan explained. “He has a history of this. That to me was really — it was really dangerous. I hope the league takes a hard look at something like that because that could have really, really seriously hurt him.”
However, Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer defended Allen, calling the foul “unfortunate” while sending his well-wishes to both the Bulls and Caruso:
“It’s something I’ve spent some of the day thinking about and I’m going to visit with Grayson for a lot of reasons, more to just check in on him and see how he’s doing. I can just go on Grayson since he’s been here and really since he’s been in the league, I think he’s been great for us. He’s competitive. He does a lot of things that are about winning. Our locker room loves him. I love him.
Competition is tough and there is things that happen in the games that are unfortunate. I know that Caruso is going to miss some time and I feel for him. I don’t want that for any of our opponents, for anybody. But there’s nothing that was done intentional and Grayson’s been nothing but great for us. The way the guys feel about him, that’s how you know the most is how the locker room feels about you.
It’s an unfortunate part of competition and I hope that the Bulls and he can be back and whole and healthy as soon as possible and look forward to competing against him again.”
In case you missed it, Lonzo Ball will also be out for six to eight weeks as he undergoes knee surgery.
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