Matas Buzelis isn’t interested in being perfect.
That’s not the point of a rookie season. And the No. 11 draft pick knows it. Buzelis knows he’ll probably log more mistakes than highlights on the court for the Chicago Bulls this season.
For coach Billy Donovan, this lack of fear is the deciding factor in the success he expects out of Buzelis — both this season and throughout his future in the NBA.
“There are some players that are younger and don’t want to make any mistakes and they want to be perfect,” Donovan said. “They get maybe a little bit tentative and passive and they’re not aggressive enough.”
That’s not the case with Buzelis. Not even close.
“(Matas) is not afraid to make mistakes. I wouldn’t say he’s a reckless guy out there. But he’s just going to make them,” Donovan said.
Buzelis doesn’t forget his mistakes, but they don’t stick to him for long. He’ll whiff on a shot, scramble to get the rebound, then fire off another attempt on the ensuing play without a hint of hesitancy.
Buzelis is driven by an eagerness to challenge, a trait that was on full display during Monday’s game against the Milwaukee Bucks as the rookie attempted to elevate past Giannis Antetokounmpo any time he was close to the two-time MVP.
“He’s not scared of anyone or any moment,” teammate Josh Giddey said after the preseason loss.
Throughout training camp, a debate building in the Bulls locker room centered around one critical question — who is the most athletic guy on the current Bulls roster?
Zach LaVine gets an automatic pass, a sign of respect for a veteran who won two dunk contests in his heyday. But the rest of the debate is trapped between two teammates: Buzelis and Julian Phillips, a fellow 20-year-old who also showed off quite a bit of bounce in his rookie season with the Bulls. But Buzelis is already the early front-runner despite not playing a regular season minute.
It’s easy to see why. During each of his pregame warmups, Buzelis casually launches himself skyward to tap his forehead against the backboard. He tosses down 360 dunks just for fun after practice. And this physicality extends well beyond dunking above the rim, reflected in his ability to run the baselines and leap over taller opponents (including the 7-foot-4 Zach Edey) for blocks.
“He has a motor,” LaVine said of Buzelis. “You can’t really teach a motor. For some guys, you got to get them going, they got to have a light get up under them. He’s ready to go from the jump.”
So what does it take for that fearlessness to translate into a larger role on the court?
Before training camp even began, Buzelis approached Donovan with a question that many coaches dread hearing from a rookie: “Am I going to be in the G League?”
The honest answer to this question is always the same. Maybe. It depends on how healthy the main rotation stays, whether Lonzo Ball is able to play real minutes, and how badly the Bulls get beat by their lack of size.
The G League partially exists as a safeguard for promising rookies to ensure they receive enough playing time when the first team’s regular season can’t accommodate them. But being sent down for G League duty can also feel like a demotion, especially for a rookie like Buzelis who already spent the last year in the league with Ignite.
Donovan tried to emphasize the fluidity of these factors, but Buzelis didn’t need the explanation. Instead, the rookie gave the same message to his coach, repeating it throughout — G League or NBA, it didn’t matter. Buzelis just wants to play.
That response impressed Donovan, mostly due to its pragmatism. Training camp could only do so much to establish clear expectations for Buzelis in his rookie season. His playing time will be a weekly conversation for Donovan and the coaching staff.
When asked if he had been given a clear-cut vision for his role at the start of training camp, Buzelis didn’t have much to offer: “Not really.” He followed the answer with an unbothered shrug, fulfilling every expectation as the youngest player on the roster.
But the first few games of the preseason highlighted a few key areas where Buzelis could immediately impact the Bulls roster. The core of his function will hinge upon providing length at a wing role to maintain the team’s goal of establishing an up-tempo style of play.
Even after the addition of backup center Jalen Smith, the Bulls’ secondary rotation shrank significantly this offseason due to the departure of rebounding specialist Andre Drummond. This means Patrick Williams will slot into the rotation as a center regularly this season despite starting at forward, creating extremely undersized rotations.
Buzelis will spend a large chunk of his minutes in these rotations with Williams and Phillips, a combination that Donovan hopes can outweigh its slightness with speed and agility.
“With the three of them, we’re long, we’re athletic,” Donovan said. “I don’t think we’ll be as physically overpowering as Andre (Drummond) was, but we can look at doing some of that. I think we have good speed and athleticism and there’s a skill level there and we do have some length. It’s all about, how do you maximize the roster?”
Buzelis is expected to grow into this role as the season progresses — and as he advances through a steep learning curve.
The rookie has already tallied a laundry list of areas of improvement for his opening weeks in the league. It’s easy to chart hard skills — closeout execution, switchability, 3-point shooting, passing out of drives — that are tracked through analytics. But for Buzelis, a crucial area for growth in the first month of the season is soft skills like communication.
Most young players consider communication to mean calling out reads or switches as they occur. But in the NBA, on-the-court communication reads more like a constant conversation. Players are never stationary and never silent, chattering nonstop from one end of the court to the other.
For a rookie like Buzelis, this often results in information overload. He gets lost on pick-and-roll switches, turned topsy-turvy in the paint while attempting to navigate screens. This doesn’t mean Buzelis is a defensive liability — but it takes time to learn to read the floor and talk to teammates like a seasoned professional.
And this is why Donovan won’t put labels — or expectations — on Buzelis in his rookie year. The veteran coach is reluctant to feed into the hype surrounding any new player. He feels fans are too quick to fixate on the “new shiny object” of a top draft pick, burning a kid out with hope before they have enough time to develop.
Donovan doesn’t want to make that mistake with Buzelis. He turned 20 on Sunday. He’s still fully learning his first NBA playbook. His biggest concern off the court is figuring out how to fill the suddenly vacant hours of adult life besides the basics — eating more, sleeping more — which have quickly become boring.
And while he searches for a hobby, the rookie is still figuring out who he wants to be in the NBA. Like most things on the court, Buzelis isn’t worried about that process.
“Consistency is the most important thing,” Buzelis said. “Staying the course, doing everything the same. Every single day has to be the same thing for me.”
It just takes time — something the rookie hopes to have plenty of in his debut season.
