Matas Buzelis’ composure broke. The answer he intended to deliver sputtered as he stared blankly into the carpet, shaking his head and chuckling in disbelief. By then, his golden brown nest of hair flowed disorderly, his fingertips constantly running through it.
“I’m sorry, I just … I wanna win games, and that’s what everything is all about,” Buzelis said when asked about his ongoing development following the latest Chicago Bulls loss.
The burden of Chicago’s freefall down the Eastern Conference standings stole the second-year forward’s train of thought. His Bulls (24-35), in prime rebuilding shape, have lost 10 straight, one loss shy of the third-longest losing streak in franchise history and tied for its longest skid in seven years.
It’s been eight games since the NBA trade deadline, when the Bulls scrambled the core Buzelis knew. Dealt away his best teammates, his closest friends, those with seniority, the leadership he leaned on. In a matter of days, the 21-year-old became the second-longest tenured player on the roster.
Among Buzelis’ most prominent traits is his delusion, the well-placed type that feels necessary to rise in the league. He prefaced the season by proclaiming that the roster, which carried much of the core that annually face-planted in the Play-In Tournament, could win. Now, alongside an incomprehensible group of ill-fitting, increasingly injured players, Buzelis believes the same. He begs for it.
Winning is all he craves. The weight of trying to pull off anything meaningful in the next couple of months with this team turns him red.
“When you trade half the team, and you bring in new guys, it’s tough,” Buzelis said. “It’s no excuse, though. We gotta come in and figure it out. And I’m (going to) say it again: I know we’re capable of doing that.”
On most nights, these Bulls are easily dismantled, still often dissolving into unsuccessful isolation. The roster doesn’t lend itself to cohesion; instead, it begs for lottery luck.
En route to the Charlotte Hornets’ hammering of Chicago on Tuesday, Buzelis’ shot selection appeared refreshingly different, ultimately leading to a career-high 32 points. He pivoted and finished with up-and-under moves. He willingly took audacious midrange shots. He shot stepback 3s off the bounce. A well-balanced diet for a player shooting for stardom, though a far cry from what Buzelis has been allowed to do for much of this season.
All as intentional as it looked.
Inside the Bulls’ facilities roughly 24 hours earlier, Buzelis went to shootaround. He found coach Billy Donovan there, stumbling into a near two-hour conversation about the shots Buzelis needed to take — a careful exploration of the midrange — and a need to find his way with his dribble. Donovan wants him to become more shifty with the ball.
“I’m gonna be what the team needs me to be,” Buzelis said.
On Tuesday, he said they needed his scoring. He delivered one of the most versatile games of his young career, the kind of promise that initially pumped life into this Bulls season.
However, none of it proved satiating to Buzelis. Cooking up a career-high 32 points never tasted so bitter.
It hardly put a dent in Charlotte’s eventual 32-point victory, the sobering reality of a season that’s already seen a third of the league’s teams pivot to positioning for a historically vaunted draft class.
Peppered with questions about what Tuesday foretold about his individual trajectory, Buzelis stammered. The team’s nosedive leaves him between a lottery ball and a hard place.
Losing at these lengths, this effortlessly, evokes a term Buzelis deems sacrilegious: tanking.
“I don’t really believe in stuff like that,” Buzelis said. “Every time I step out to do something competitive, I’m trying to win. All the guys are trying to win. Billy’s trying to win. Billy is harping on us that we’re gonna go out and compete every night. Win, lose, draw, we’re gonna also get up the next day and work.
“I don’t really like that word. And people might think that (we’re tanking), but I’m going out and trying to win every night. All these guys are, too.”
There’s a naivete to Buzelis’ fire. Despite the Bulls uprooting his surroundings, he maintains an innocence. The added pressure has not quite sent him overboard. This skid hasn’t sapped his joyous, boyish nature. Not yet.
“I’ve been working with a mental health coach about building a mentality,” Buzelis said. “Your mentality matters because the outcome of your life is dependent on your perspective. Going out, working and trying to be the best player you could be every possession. That’s what I’ve been focusing on.”
With recently reported wide-ranging discussions between NBA commissioner Adam Silver and teams surrounding potential amendments of the league’s current draft system and lottery rules, Chicago’s decision-makers eye what appears to be their last chance to weaponize the current odds — the best path with how few assets they’ve yielded elsewhere.
Pretty soon, Buzelis could live in a world where teams are no longer incentivized to lose, though that might not matter in Chicago anytime soon.
However, for two more months, Buzelis holds out hope that he can help shape a reality he can stomach.