Preseason never means anything. I mean, there’s people who will delude themselves into thinking it might mean something, and it never does.
But it might work for us…
Indeed, Matas Buzelis looks promising, and I think special consideration should be made that he also looks:
Exciting and cool to watch, which is not something the Bulls have had in a while
Very large, so it just feels - caveats about preseason already stated - more sustainable and useful than if he was some tiny guard having a hot shooting stretch
But the Bulls team as a whole, especially the starting lineup that includes Buzelis, looks pretty bad. I had to chuckle at this note from new-to-the-beat Joel Lorenzi at The Athletic1 after the Bulls fell behind early against the Timberwolves, a trend all preseason:
It’s preseason, and every team the Bulls have played is objectively better than them, but teams have just generated far better looks at a far better frequency this early in the game. This defensive identity thing will be a slow, slow burn.
Let’s be ‘objective’: the Bulls are definitively worse than all but, what, 6 or 7 teams in the league? They’re only in consideration for a play-in spot because they make it their implied mission statement when other teams will likely tank after injury, and they are in the JV conference.
And the ‘defensive identity thing’ is just spin from a do-nothing and know-nothing executive. Unlike the ‘offensive identity thing’ from last season that they are spiking the football over, you get less credit for a style of play versus actual effectiveness.
Preseason can’t confirm this, but we can look at the roster and reasonably project this will not be an effective defense. Without Coby White - who missed the entire preseason with a calf strain2 - they will not be an effective offense either.
They may not even be an effective offense with Coby White, as even after including him there looks to be a fundamental problem where all this vaunted depth on the roster is with one-way players. Including Nikola Vucevic, who likely won’t have a repeat of a career-best shooting season in his age-35 season like he did at 34. I brought this up in my post saying the Bulls should extend Ayo Dosunmu: it’s fine that Kevin Huerter can be replaced by Tre Jones, Isaac Okoro for Dalen Terry, Patrick Williams for Julian Phillips…but it’s not that good of a sign that all these guys are replacement-level, and there are so many non-shooters among them.
None of these players are projected to matter much. Not nearly as much as Buzelis, and speculatively Noa Essengue, who also showed flashes this preseason but as one of the youngest players in the league on a team that is trying to be ‘competitive while building’, won’t be a factor on the big club this year.
I figured the same for Buzelis last preseason, and though I was wrong I still think that was only due to the injuries to the frontcourt. That could potentially happen again, and combining that with Buzelis becoming more of a featured player while not being efficient yet, it could mean for a very bad record this year.
And…that would be perhaps the best result we could hope for this season?
Bulls miss out on play-in (let alone playoff) revenue, the front office continues to embarrass the franchise spinning that they’re trying to compete but don’t do anything materially damaging because they rarely do anything at all, they get fired and the new people have a pretty clean slate outside of a couple exciting young forwards as building blocks.
An accidental tank, that not only exposes how the front office has failed their stated plan of simultaneously “competing” and “building” by not doing either3, but also will allow Buzelis and possibly Essengue to get more reps AND net them a higher-value draft pick in 2026.
If not Go Bulls…Go That?
via a social media app that I will not link out of spite…annoyed that it’s looking like another season where all these reporters insist to stay on it, exclusively, for their in-game analysis
injuries are something else we can’t really take from preseason. It’s certainly not good news that Coby isn’t ready, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if he will play opening night because he is healthy enough to play in real games just not fake ones.
no credit for drafting Buzelis and Essengue as they are lucky other teams passed on them, and if you’re ‘building’ you need to be doing more to get more picks and higher-value picks, anybody can make 1 selection a year mid-round.
What's incredible about this team is that the floor is so high. No superstar, low ceiling, but high floor due to a deep roster of replacement level players. The team has many contract year players that have incentive to try, and management that has no tank edict and so have incentive to try. The team does have character, it does have continuity. It does have 6 or 7 players that you'd expect to be better just based on year-to-year improvement.
The earned negativity around this team is all based on AK's refusal to pursue a more aggressive asset-based strategy to acquire a possible superstar (and his clear incapacity to execute that strategy), but that doesn't mean the team will be bad, and this team is clearly not going to be very bad. If someone doesn't watch the game in protest of a Reinsdorf owned marketing-forward profit milking team that should be spending like the LA Dodgers based on the brand's outsized reputation in a huge city, then that is your right and commendable. But the negativity around the players is misplaced aside from a couple prominent low-lateral-speed starters. This team will play fast, will be fun to watch, and will have qualities that in different situations you would appreciate.
This is the first non-LaVine season since.... 2016. He was a curse of a player, a low-iq, low defensive effort, crunch time cringing, ball-stopping, rotation missing player who was the marquee player following a 7 year run of inspirational play highlighted by a transcendent, generational and ultimately tragic sensation of a player. LaVine could never fill the empty space and was a complete drag.
This team doesn't have that drag. This team is guaranteed to win 35 games and I think there are pathways for 45 wins.
I have been a Bulls fan since the year I graduated high school (1990). This team has been mediocre at best, since the Three Alpha`s / Gar-Pax regime. Buzelis basically fell into the front office`s lap when they drafted him, and thankfully so. I don`t speak for everyone, do I hope this team win games and possibly makes a playoff push (and I mean more then the play in)? Yes. But, do I think this team is going to do anything as far as winning goes in the foreseeable future, No. I`m hopeful they`ll sign Coby & continue to build around him and Buzelis, but they`ll probably trade Coby, and this team will end up completely jettisoning everyone on the roster and rebuilding again in another couple years. And I thought Gar-Pax was bad.