Bulls opening night win serves as a good 'building, while competitive' case

there was the goal of 'growth', and Matas Buzelis showed that

Most of what Bulls management does, let alone says, is of little consequence when considering the slight possibility that this team will become relevant again. So when it comes to the Bulls opening night victory over the Pistons, I don’t feel the need to lead with anything besides what does have potential impact: the rise of Matas Buzelis.

Former Bulls beat writer Stephen Noh went into Buzelis’s opener more here, and I recommend giving it a full read. But the bullet point positives that carried over from a stellar preseason:

• off-ball movement

• finishing at the basket

• shotblocking

And what shouldn’t be overlooked is that Matas is ‘cool’ and ‘fun to watch’, which has been missing for years. It’s great to feel like the Bulls have a young building block to watch, something that’s also been missing for years. You could stretch (literally, given his stature) and say that’s dismissing Coby White, but that name is especially interesting as it’s his absence that is more opening up offensive opportunity for Buzelis.

For this performance I have no notes, no criticisms. I think Billy Donovan has gotten a lot of undeserved credit in how he ‘handled’ Buzelis last season - he only played Matas regularly after all the injuries forced his hand. But in starting Matas, playing him nearly 34 minutes, and letting him remain audacious and assertive even through mistakes, Donovan will get deserved credit this season for not being in his way.

So that was the 'building’ part of opening night. The ‘competitive’ part was also effective, but very much not cool nor fun to watch:

Cue the ‘they can’t keep getting away with this!’ meme for the Josh Giddey - Nikola Vucevic offense.

Vuc was the main reason the Bulls won the game, going 4-6 from three, hitting several floaters and even finishing an alley-oop with a layup. Speaking of the alley-oop, it seemed like whenever Detroit wanted to just run Jalen Duren to the rim they’d get a dunk on ol’ Vuc, but it looked worse than it turned out being.

And I don’t know how Giddey earned 11 free throw attempts, and though that is something that has carried over from post-AllStarBreak ‘surge’ last season I am still not locking it in as sustainable yet. But when it works, that trick is a way for Giddey, and this offense he leads, to at least be average as it compensates for Giddey’s still-present drawbacks (defense, turnovers, outside shooting.

I was not impressed with the Pistons, and more agree with Noh’s take that Cade Cunningham ‘sleepwalked’ versus Tom Ziller’s credit to Isaac ‘NoScoreO’ Okoro’s defense. Detroit lost a lot of 3 point shooting from last year’s team, and their replacements of Duncan Robinson and Caris LeVert combined to go 1/8 from distance in this game. Losing to the Bulls without Coby White is a bad loss for them, and would be concerning if this was a Pistons blog.

For the Bulls: good win, but they needed a lot to go right - including more clutch luck after a 4th quarter collapse - and I’m not thinking they’re materially better than I expected heading into the year based on this one game. But management had similarly low expectations, and they were met.

Quick and unfair pass/fail on the rest of the playing rotation on opening night:

Good: Jones, Dosunmu, Huerter

Bad: Okoro, Williams, Smith, Terry