If the Chicago Bulls could only ensure they hold on to one of their current players, one NBA insider believes they’d have no choice but to pick Matas Buzelis. The other options are Coby White, current RFA Josh Giddey, first-round pick Noa Essengue, and maybe Ayo Dosunmu, so it’s not hard to see the thought process with that pick.
Chicago Bulls’ Matas Buzelis is the most untouchable player on the roster
If the NBA had an expansion draft and teams were only allowed to keep one player for certain, there’s really no better Chicago Bulls candidate than Matas Buzelis. He’s the face of the franchise, arguably, and he’s only in his second season.
In four seasons since executive VP Arturas Karnisovas said they won’t settle for mediocrity, the Bulls have gone 164-164, which means they don’t have a star player, and they’ve not been in a good position to land one. That’s why Buzelis is the choice for Bleacher Report’s Zach Buckley.
“As one might expect, this roster is about as blah as an NBA roster can get, but the promise Buzelis showed down the stretch of his rookie season was enough to make him the obvious choice here,” he said. If nothing else, Buzelis gets the nod by default over a lack of alternative options.
Buckley added, “While the 20-year-old wasn’t great or even very good, he flashed intriguing two-way versatility. He’s a danger in transition, a capable (if streaky) shot-maker and a disruptive defender who can switch through assignments and make plays as a weak-side helper. For a team that waited far too long to embrace a youth movement, he looks like a legitimate find.”
The Bulls did pick Noa Essengue, a similar mold of player, the very next draft, but he looks more unpolished and doesn’t quite have the same NBA floor that Buzelis clearly does. Coby White is too old, Josh Giddey clearly isn’t the most important player on the roster, and everyone else is either too old or just not worth the fuss.
That leaves Buzelis. Perhaps the silver lining is that the Bulls do at least have one player worth hanging on to as part of the much-needed rebuild they have yet to really undergo.
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