The Chicago Bulls are a better team when Lonzo Ball is in their rotation. He's a great on-ball defender, an effective shooter from deep, and has the rare ability to shift off and on-ball with ease, thus allowing him to play alongside seemingly any other guard from Zach LeVine to Colby White, and even his fellow former Los Angeles Laker Alex Caruso.

And yet, in the NBA, the best ability is availability, and during the 2021-22 season, Ball just wasn't on the court enough to allow the team to reach their full potential.

After taking the court for 35 of the Bulls' first 40 games – 35 games that saw the team go 22-13 – Ball suffered a knee injury that held him out of the back half of the season and all of the playoffs. Though there would be occasional rumblings about his status, the UCLA product never came close to returning to the court and effectively turned his attention to 2022-23, when he would hopefully return to the court and pick up where he left off.

Unfortunately, the insight Arturas Karnisovas provided into Ball's past season, and the update he afforded on his future isn't exactly going to make many Chicago Bulls fans jump for joy.

“We don't know his timeline for a return?” say it ain't so Cody Westerlund of 670 The Score, say it ain't so.

So not only did the Bulls opt to prolong Ball's surgery to give him a chance to rehab first, but they now don't even know when he could return? Well, that's less than ideal.