It started out with a bang when the Chicago Bulls won their first five games for the first time since 1996-97.
Matas Buzelis was on a roll, Nikola Vučević looked like he’d found the fountain of youth, and with a productive bench and the imminent return of injured star Coby White, the future looked much brighter than anyone had anticipated.
But the season has since turned into a bust, and now the question of who will still be around after February’s trade deadline is being debated ad nauseam.
The Bulls players hear the noise, but after Wednesday’s 127-111 win over the Cleveland Cavaliers at the United Center, Josh Giddey said it’s nothing to be concerned about.
“We never speak about it internally,” he said. “We all believe we’ve got enough in this locker room. All that stuff is out of our control. It’s all upstairs. They make their decisions.”
Giddey had a triple-double with 23 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists, and tied a career high with five 3-pointers. White led the way with 25 points, Vučević scored 13 of his 20 points in the fourth quarter, and the Bulls shot a season-high 56.2% on the night.
“I appreciate the guys, we mixed up rotations a little differently,” coach Billy Donovan said. “The guys, I think, understood that and the level of sacrifice and wanting to fill a role on how they can help.”
Donovan played bigs Zach Collins and Jalen Smith together in one rotation, which could be a more common sight down the road. “Hopefully, going forward, we can look at those kind of lineups,” he said.
White and Vučević look like the two most likely departees from the team, and the only one seemingly safe from the trade talk is Buzelis, who is still growing into his role as a starter but lacking the consistency he needs to be a prime-time player.
In last Sunday’s loss to the New Orleans Pelicans, Buzelis took only five shots in 23 1/2 minutes, finishing with 9 points as the Bulls fell for the eighth time in nine games. He was quiet again Wednesday, scoring 9 points on 3-for-7 shooting, with one rebound in 22 minutes.
The Bulls didn’t need his offense on this night, but they need him to grow up quickly. Donovan said he’s seen a lot of growth and development from Buzelis, though he believes some of it doesn’t register on the stat sheet.
“A lot of times you look at the performance or shooting percentage or how many points he scores, but I don’t really look at it that way,” Donovan said before Wednesday’s game.
“He’s doing a lot more this year with the ball in his hands than he did a year ago, and is having to guard a totally different player, going against much, much better players guarding him than a year ago. Those are growth opportunities for him.”
Buzelis just turned 21 in October and only began getting minutes about halfway into his rookie season, following the trade of Zach LaVine. This is his first full season as a starter
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, and it’s not fair to judge him on the first 25 games.But if the Bulls want fans to look at Buzelis as a core player who will lead the rebuild, he’ll need to become a more productive scorer and improve on his 3-point shooting, along with getting better on defense.
Entering Wednesday, he was averaging 13.6 points per game and shooting 32.4% from beyond the arc, despite taking the second-most 3 attempts (36-of-111) on the team behind Vučević (44-of-116). The Bulls are tied with the Cavs for 20th in 3-pointing shooting and 26th in points per game, so he’s obviously not the only one who needs to step up.
And perhaps Bulls fans may have gotten too excited over his 27-point night against the Sacramento Kings in the fourth game of the season, when the team was still riding its early-season wave. LaVine basically passed him the torch, saying: “Matas, this is just the trajectory he’s going to be on. The athleticism and the mindset were already there.”
But he’s been up and down since, and over his last 11 games entering Wednesday, Buzelis was shooting 22.4% from 3-point range and averaging 12.2 points.
Donovan isn’t concerned about Buzelis’s confidence, which has never waned.
“I think he’s handled things very, very well because of what’s been thrown at him, and there’s been a lot thrown at him,” Donovan said.
The ability to fight through the struggles is nothing new for a young NBA player, even for first-round draft picks like Buzelis, who came in with the label “project,” like so many of executive vice president of basketball operations Artūras Karnišovas’s first-rounders.
Donovan compared Buzelis’s up-and-down start to the beginning of Joakim Noah’s college career at Florida, when Donovan was Noah’s coach.
“I saw Joakim Noah go through an amazing and incredible struggle his freshman year — really, really rough,” Donovan said. “And I’ve never seen a player go through that and then come back the next year and go from where he was as a freshman to maybe being the No. 1 player in the draft (before) electing to come back.
”It’s definitely about these (learning) experiences. I’ve said this for him before the season started — it’s going to be this (way) for him. It’s just him. To me, it’s all how he internalizes it and comes out of it. If he doesn’t come out of this better, then (the struggles) were for nothing.”
Donovan said Buzelis is a smart player and looks at things the right way, which is what matters most. Last year, Buzelis was averaging 5.3 points per game over his first 25 games and playing only 13 minutes off the bench as Donovan treated him with kid gloves.
One year later, the Bulls need Buzelis to grow up in a hurry or else face the likelihood of a long and grueling rebuild.
“I always say there’s a bull’s-eye on the problem, and you have to really address it,” Donovan said. “If you can address the problem correctly, you can really grow from that, and I do feel from my conversations he’s really internalizing a lot of stuff … It’s a lot for him, and I give him a lot of credit for what he’s had to handle these first 25 games, and he probably realizes how hard it is from where he was a year ago to where he is now.”
The Bulls play at Cleveland on Friday, and know they can’t pretend one win is going to change their season. But it was a good start.
“Obviously, we got Coby and his ball-hogging self back,” Smith said with a laugh. “Our main goal is to play for each other, play for our team and play for the name on the front of our jersey, not the back.”
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