The Chicago Bulls come into the 2025-26 NBA season as a team hoping to finally have some direction after a few years of not being good enough to be anything more than a play-in team, but not bad enough to kick start a rebuild with a high enough draft pick. But as they begin the season, the Bulls will be a little bit shorthanded due to a wrist injury to Zach Collins.
Zach Collins underwent surgery for a wrist injury and is expected be sidelined for at least four weeks which would put him past the start of the Bulls’ season, as per Michael Scotto of Hoopshype.com. The injury was Collins’ left wrist and is being called a non-displaced fracture. The Bulls are slated to open the regular season on Wednesday Oct. 22 at home against the Detroit Pistons.
Collins was coming into his first full season with the Bulls after being acquired at last season’s trade deadline. He was a part of the three-team trade that saw De’Aaron Fox join the San Antonio Spurs and Zach LaVine end up with the Sacramento Kings.
The No. 10 overall pick in the 2017 NBA Draft, Collins spent the first three seasons of his career with the Portland Trail Blazers. Collins signed with the Spurs as a free agent ahead of the 2021-22 season, and had actually signed an extension with the team before they traded him to the Bulls. He is in the final year of his contract and will hit unrestricted free agency in the offseason.
After the trade, Collins appeared in 28 games for the Bulls, including eight starts, at a little over 19 minutes per game. He averaged 8.6 points, 6.7 rebounds and 2.1 assists with splits of 54.1 percent shooting from the field, 30 percent shooting from the three-point line and 88.4 percent shooting from the free-throw line.
This past season, the Bulls failed to make the playoffs for the fourth consecutive year after losing in the play-in to the Miami Heat.
