Prior to the Chicago Bulls last home game against the Orlando Magic, head coach Billy Donovan explained why, up until that point, Bulls rookie Matas Buzelis had only accumulated 24 total minutes over the team’s first four games.
As the Bulls announced, Buzelis has been assigned to the team’s G League affiliate, the Windy City Bulls. Despite the rookie having spent last season with the G League Ignite, the Bulls have foreshadowed the potential for Buzelis to play in Hoffman Estates multiple times during training camp. More recently, Donovan hedged on those comments, clarifying that the organization would do whatever it could to help him develop, even put him in the G League if it came to that.
The door was always left open.
“This idea of taking him and throwing him in there and playing him 25 minutes, I don’t know if that’s the best thing for him,” Donovan said. “He’s got to understand the league and learn. Some of it may be moving down to the G League.”
“We’re totally committed to his development and helping him,” Donovan added. “But people have to understand, at 19 years old, there’s a huge learning curve for him.”
A trip to the G League should not be considered a demotion or punishment by any means. This is a chance to learn the game, adapt to the speed of the game and give him more room to learn on the fly than he’s getting with the big team.
“When you when you’re trying to you’re trying to win, and then you’re trying to develop at the same time, it’s like hard to do those things,” Donovan continued. “But I also think too, minutes — without question I’ve said this before — is part of the development piece for him. But he’s got to earn minutes.”
Buzelis hasn’t gone beyond nine minutes in any game so far. He was a DNP-CD in the team’s most recent game in Brooklyn and got just four minutes in last week’s game against the Magic.
This was his main contribution:
This is not a slight towards Buzelis by any means — his talent speaks for itself. His combination physical tools, skillset and potential are the most intriguing of any player on the roster and the Bulls, given their current timeline, should be exploring that.
“Part of his development, his growth, is learning how competitively and how hard he needs to play on every possession,” Donovan said. “And if he’s playing well, you can kind of extend him some minutes.”
The truth is, Buzelis hasn’t earned a larger role. And it’s difficult to do so in limited minutes. But he is far away from being able to contribute at this point, and it is best for him to get some reps with the G League team so he can keep working his way up — something he vowed to do during training camp.
“I’m always going to listen to organization,” the Bulls rookie said after his first day of training camp. “So if they tell me I got to be in the G League, I’m gonna be in the G League. And you know, that’s fine with me, but I’m gonna work my way up to the to the top team of course.”
There’s also the playing time element — other wings like Patrick Williams, Julian Phillips and Dalen Terry are ahead of Buzelis in the rotation. With so many guards in the backcourt, the Bulls have been playing Zach LaVine and Josh Giddey at the small forward spot at times, further complicating Buzelis’ path to minutes.
“Rotation wise, for me, it’s trying to get him on the floor with some veteran guys, just where he’s got some stabilizers around him,” Donovan add. “And then the other part of it too is you have three guys there at that position. You have Matas, you have Julian, and you got Patrick. And there’s going to be a little bit of level of sacrifice for all those guys.”
Even if he was being gifted a larger role, the team doesn’t want to overwhelm Buzelis or make him lose confidence due to lack of minutes or lack of production in what few minutes he earns. This is a delicate balance they’ll have to strike — and an opportunity to have the ball in his hands more in Windy City should help.
It seems unlikely Buzelis spends too long in Hoffman Estates. Windy City is gearing up for training camp ahead of their season opener on November 8. With two days off between games, maybe Buzelis is back up with the Bulls ahead of Monday’s matchup with the Utah Jazz.
Either way, I wouldn’t be sounding the alarm bells. The organization is fully committed to his development, and they’re taking action the best way they can to make sure he hits his ceiling.
“He’s a great guy, great worker, total team guy,” Donovan said. “He’s got a lot of skills. But he needs to learn what is going his his identity is going to be as a player.”
