Billy Donovan admittedly doesn’t know what Matas Buzelis, Josh Giddey or Coby White are “going to look like four years from now.”
A player like Buzelis could be a perennial All-Star and the face of the Bulls franchise by then. Giddey could be a nightly triple-double. White? An elite guard who continues to push up on the ceiling.
That’s the hope for the coach as he is set to tip-off Year 6 in his current chair on Wednesday when Detroit visits the United Center.
The reality?
White is sidelined with a strained right calf for at least the next two weeks, Giddey has to become a consistent player, and Buzelis just turned the legal drinking age.
Donovan’s focus right now is, “I have to help these guys understand what really goes into winning and what it takes. I don’t know if it’s retooling, rebuilding, but we’re in the second year of saying, ‘Can we continually move forward?’ Building out an identity where you can say, ‘OK, stylistically this is a good style to play.’
“I like our guys competitively in terms of what we’re trying to do, and we’ll see how it all plays out. I think we’re in the next iteration of what we established last year.”
An iteration that includes still playing at a pace that has the opposition resting their hands on their knees by the final quarter, but adding an element of physicality, especially on the defensive end.
All well and good, but the sink or swim of this entire experiment of pace and depth still falls on one simple question: Where is the superstar going to come from?
It’s a question that executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas bobs and weaves on in answering, falling on the sword of it could still come in-house with a White, Giddey or Buzelis.
It better.
The Bulls have six contracts expiring after this season – including White, won’t be looking to tank for a loaded 2026 draft class, and have had more misses than hits when they do draft.
That’s why all eyes are on Buzelis, coming off a preseason in which he led the team in scoring with 17.6 points per game, had a five-block game against the Nuggets, and shot 39.3% from three.
He’s added secondary ball-handling to his offensive bag and some muscle to his frame for the defensive end of the floor.
Besides a lack of experience, there’s not a lot of flaws in Buzelis’ game going into Year 2.
Where it gets interesting is White was absent the entire preseason, so when the guard does get healthy enough for a return, will it push Buzelis back into the passenger in the car rather than driver?
Donovan didn’t seem concerned with that.
“We don’t have the kind of team … and I don’t mean like isolation, holding the ball for 24 seconds,” Donovan explained. “When I say isolation, the ball is in the guy’s hands and, ‘OK, you go make the play.’ I don’t think our team is like that, so we’ve got to be predicated on ball movement and player movement. I want Matas to be as aggressive as possible. With Coby, without Coby.
“There’s going to be five guys out there, and certainly you’re going to run things for a Coby, for a Matas, you will do that. But in the course of the way we’re playing, pace and speed-wise, if you’re trying to manufacture a guy’s usage rate the first thing that goes down is your pace, speed and your tempo. We’ve got to play fast.”