I may have found something actually interesting to monitor in the remaining Bulls games.

There was NBA news last night from Denver, where the Nuggets’ Jamal Murray left their game with an ankle sprain and it meant he was now ineligible for postseason awards.

The Bulls don’t have to “worry” about having All-NBA players on their roster (no super-max! phew…), but they do have Alex Caruso looking to try and repeat an appearance on the All-Defensive Team, which is also subject to these new game minimums.

A player needs to play 65 games of at least 20 minutes, with 2 games allowed between 15 and 20.

This season, Caruso has missed 9 games outright, but also had 7 more where he played less than 20 minutes.

So to be eligible this season (last season he did play 67 games so he would’ve met this if it was enacted then) Caruso needs to play 20 or more minutes in 20 of the 23 remaining Bulls games.

He’s questionable tonight after leaving Tuesday’s game early and missing the Wednesday game entirely. I was curious if Caruso returning late in that loss to the Pistons was driven by wanting to hit the minutes requirement, but he was already over 20 in that game when he got injured.