Matas Buzelis doesn’t want to rush anything.
The forward is not afraid of setting goals that scrape the sky in his second season with the Chicago Bulls. He wants to be named an All-Defensive player. And he wants to become the third second-year pro to win the league’s Most Improved Player award. Buzelis, after all, has never been one to be shy about his future.
Even with the swagger of these lofty expectations, Buzelis isn’t pressuring himself to become the star of the show in Chicago this season, which opens Wednesday night against the Detroit Pistons at the United Center.
“I think I can be a go-to guy,” Buzelis said. “But at the end of the day it comes down to whatever the team needs to win the games. The NBA now, it’s positionless. So whoever has a heater, whoever’s playing extremely well, that’s who we’re going to go to. It’s a team sport. If it’s my night, it’s my night. If it’s not, I’m going to have to do the dirty work and rebound, defend as hard as possible, do the little things to impact the game.”
Buzelis is keeping himself humble. But his outlook is also a reflection of pragmatism — something that coach Billy Donovan prioritized throughout the forward’s first season in Chicago.
Donovan was stingy with his praise in the early months of Buzelis’ debut season, yanking the rookie out of games for small mistakes and hesitating to overblow expectations every time he flashed a highlight. But this season, Donovan is more openly appreciative. Buzelis has gotten stronger and smarter with the ball in his hands. He’s more savvy in the pick-and-roll, sharper on the fast break.
Most importantly, his mentality and work ethic align with the lofty goals that both Buzelis and the Bulls fan base have set for his career. Buzelis is confident. He’s hungry to learn. But he has learned to practice patience — at least externally — and keep a long-term scope on his goals. And this combination makes Donovan confident the forward will take yet another step forward in Year 2.
But stardom? Donovan believes that can only come with time — and with team success.
“Do I think he can get there?” Donovan said. “Yeah. But that’s not going to happen this year in my opinion.”
For every improvement Buzelis makes, Donovan can find another still waiting to be fulfilled.
Bulls forward Matas Buzelis dunks the ball during a preseason game against the Minnesota Timberwolves on Oct. 16, 2025, at the United Center. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
The kid needs to get stronger — hell, he turned 21 only last week, still years from his physical prime. He needs to become a primary defender, taking on a range of forwards from Giannis Antetokounmpo to Julius Randle to Karl-Anthony Towns.
And most importantly, Donovan believes Buzelis needs to win — with the Bulls, through the Bulls — to ascend to any level of stardom.
“He’s got to figure out first the things he’s got to do to impact winning,” Donovan said. “I’ve never really been a big believer of just throwing a guy out there and giving him minutes and putting the ball in his hands and saying, ‘Go do it.’ Because inevitably at some point, you want him to be a winning player. And that’s what he needs to learn.”
If Buzelis wants to have a breakout year, he received an unexpected opportunity to get a jump at the start of the season — the absence of Coby White, who will be sidelined for at least the first two weeks with a lingering calf injury.
Without their leading scorer, the Bulls need to look elsewhere to jump-start the offense. And after he bumped his scoring to 13 points per game after the All-Star break last season, Buzelis might seem like an obvious option. But the forward isn’t vocalizing any expectations for a sudden scoring onslaught.
“I’m not going to force anything,” Buzelis said. “I don’t need to do that. I’ve got a bunch of guys who can score on the team, so it doesn’t really concern me in any way.”
While he will have more room to work in the offense while White is sidelined, Buzelis also will be facing a challenge synonymous with sophomore years — opponents have a full season of film on him.
Buzelis is a starter now. And without Zach LaVine on the roster, the forward has quickly become one of the top scouting targets for opposing teams when they line up against the Bulls. This means harder defensive assignments and craftier strategies to challenge
Year 2 is always the hardest hurdle for a young player — which is why Buzelis is eager to dive in.
“I’m more excited (than anxious) because I get to learn and see what I have to work on,” Buzelis said.
This is how Buzelis views his second season in the NBA. He’s going to be challenged. At times, he’ll probably fail. But if he can show a buoyancy in his response to those challenges, he’ll end the season closer to all of those goals — All-Defense, Most Improved Player, a true star — than he was at the start.
And the primary goal? Well, Buzelis said that has remained the same: “Win as many games as possible.”