2024 NBA Draft - Chicago Bulls select Matas Buzelis with the 11th pick

[DuckIII]

Tanking for Cooper Flagg is the final piece.. get rid of everybody, gut it down to the studs.

Flagg and Matas would be interesting

We’re not really going to tank though. Not the way some teams are going to do it.

[Mbrahv0528]

Tanking for Cooper Flagg is the final piece.. get rid of everybody, gut it down to the studs.

Flagg and Matas would be interesting

We’re not really going to tank though. Not the way some teams are going to do it.

Agreed. The only way we land the #1 pick is somehow being bad enough (while not really trying to be bad) to be in that sweet spot of odds AND then getting extremely lucky enough to have the ping pong balls go our way. So, not a very likely scenario.

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[dawhizz]

Tanking for Cooper Flagg is the final piece.. get rid of everybody, gut it down to the studs.

Flagg and Matas would be interesting

We’re not really going to tank though. Not the way some teams are going to do it.

Isn’t the Bulls pick only top ten protected, otherwise it goes to the Spurs? That’s pretty good incentive to tank.

[fleet]

Tanking for Cooper Flagg is the final piece.. get rid of everybody, gut it down to the studs.

Flagg and Matas would be interesting

We’re not really going to tank though. Not the way some teams are going to do it.

Isn’t the Bulls pick only top ten protected, otherwise it goes to the Spurs? That’s pretty good incentive to tank.

Your best most hopeful talent being 19 and 21 years old is the main incentive

[DuckIII]

Tanking for Cooper Flagg is the final piece.. get rid of everybody, gut it down to the studs.

Flagg and Matas would be interesting

We’re not really going to tank though. Not the way some teams are going to do it.

Isn’t the Bulls pick only top ten protected, otherwise it goes to the Spurs? That’s pretty good incentive to tank.

Don’t have to tank to be top 10. Hell, we were 11 this year and busted ass to win as much as possible.

[Jstock12]

We’re not really going to tank though. Not the way some teams are going to do it.

Isn’t the Bulls pick only top ten protected, otherwise it goes to the Spurs? That’s pretty good incentive to tank.

Don’t have to tank to be top 10. Hell, we were 11 this year and busted ass to win as much as possible.

That's encouraging and deeply depressing at the same time.

[Ice Man]

I'm not normally a tanker, nor for giving young players court time until they earn it, but next year I'd be fine with -

Giddey
Coby/Ayo
Somebody (Pat?)
Matas
Somebody

Take my lumps, see what I have, collect a high draft pick.

[sco]

Givony:

Matas Buzelis is peaking at the right time

After missing the first three months of the G League season with ankle injuries, Buzelis was slow out of the gates but has been playing his best basketball of late. He's shooting 39% from 3 over his past 10 games, has transformed himself from being a poor defender to being extremely impactful on and off the ball, and is soaking up increased usage successfully with ball-dominant Ron Holland now sidelined for the season with a thumb injury.

Buzelis was on a major platform this past weekend at the Rising Stars game, where he was able to match up with Oklahoma City's Chet Holmgren, Charlotte's Brandon Miller and many other of the NBA's most talented young players. He showed his passing creativity, shot-making prowess, defensive playmaking instincts and all-around aggressiveness attacking opponents consistently -- even hitting a game-winning turnaround jumper to advance to the championship game.

Being able to showcase his tremendous size, improving frame and intriguing versatility on both ends of the floor was a major opportunity for Buzelis, something that will likely stick with the many NBA executives in attendance ahead of the pre-draft process.
Having weighed 185 pounds exactly a year ago, Buzelis is now at 205, which has unlocked some added explosiveness and an ability to initiate and play through contact more effectively on both ends of the floor. Buzelis is always looming as a weakside rim-protector and is doing a much better job of getting in a low stance, turning his hips and sliding his feet on the perimeter, staying down on fakes and showing impressive instincts staying attached to opponents.

His shot-creation prowess is something teams want to see him continue to make strides with, as he's been somewhat of a mixed bag operating out of pick-and-roll and in isolation, not always able to beat defenders cleanly off the bounce and finish what he creates, due to his lack of strength. Buzelis' jumper has been streaky -- he's 22-for-84 from 3 in 26 games -- but has been on an upward trajectory, showing clean mechanics, a high release and confidence with his shot-making prowess, something teams will be studying closely in the pre-draft process.

Buzelis was the original No. 1 prospect in our very first mock draft released one year ago, and he's putting himself back in that conversation with the way he's playing of late. He's got several more weeks to continue building momentum before his season comes to a close. He should continue to benefit from being a top offensive option for Ignite with Holland out. -- Jonathan Givony

If a valid scouting report, why does he drop to 11?

Thank you for finding Kodo's OP. I knew I saw this. It is very uplifting. Like I said before, if he can become a 36% 3pt shooter, I see enough from his physical attributes and skills to make me believe he could be a legit starting talent, which is a big win at #11. I'm been too hopeful on guys immediately becoming good 3pt shooters in the past to expect anything this season. I'm also not a fan of starting rooks, it seems to actually more often than not lead to sophomore slumps.

[TheSuzerain]

Tanking for Cooper Flagg is the final piece.. get rid of everybody, gut it down to the studs.

Flagg and Matas would be interesting

We’re not really going to tank though. Not the way some teams are going to do it.

Agreed. The only way we land the #1 pick is somehow being bad enough (while not really trying to be bad) to be in that sweet spot of odds AND then getting extremely lucky enough to have the ping pong balls go our way. So, not a very likely scenario.

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There is a bit of a sweet spot at like #5 odds.

That seems possible.

[dougthonus]

Tanking for Cooper Flagg is the final piece.. get rid of everybody, gut it down to the studs.

Flagg and Matas would be interesting

We’re not really going to tank though. Not the way some teams are going to do it.

The good news is, that probably doesn't matter all that much. I know you are aware of this, but to re-iterate it, if you are the worst team in the league you are 50% picking 5th and 50% picking better than 5th. If we're the 7th worst team in the league our odds at #1 are 7.5% vs 14% for being the worst team. That's a big difference of course (almost 2x the chance) but you still have a reasonable shot at it by not being absolutely god awful.

[League Circles]

The talk of tanking because we probably won't have Demar, and maybe not Zach or Vuc, is actually very funny because there's plenty of evidence that they were exactly what was holding us back. Like simply swapping Demar for Giddey is likely to improve us. Simply swapping some of Vuc's minutes for whoever the 2025 version of Tony Bradley will likely improve us more, etc. Zach didn't really play last year, so he's a moot point. Only real likely detriment is if we lose Williams. If we don't, he and Ayo can replace Caruso IMO.

[coldfish]

Tanking for Cooper Flagg is the final piece.. get rid of everybody, gut it down to the studs.

Flagg and Matas would be interesting

We’re not really going to tank though. Not the way some teams are going to do it.

The good news is, that probably doesn't matter all that much. I know you are aware of this, but to re-iterate it, if you are the worst team in the league you are 50% picking 5th and 50% picking better than 5th. If we're the 7th worst team in the league our odds at #1 are 7.5% vs 14% for being the worst team. That's a big difference of course (almost 2x the chance) but you still have a reasonable shot at it by not being absolutely god awful.

https://www.tankathon.com/pick_odds

To tack on, those are the full lottery odds. From my perspective, you want to have about the 6th worst record. The difference between that and worst is 5%. To state that a different way, the difference between 6th and worst record comes into play once every 20 years.

It falls off pretty quickly after that.

The quality of the 6th seed varies wildly. Some years that's a 32 win team, others its a 21 win team.

IMO, the Bulls could get down to a 30ish win team relatively easily.

I see 3 teams uber tanking this year. NJ, Washington, Portland. A few others may join that list.

[drosestruts]

Looks like someone who can be a 36+% 3pt shooter

Watch on YouTube

This guy too?

Watch on YouTube

Please tell me this is a joke and you don’t actually think this is reasonable or rational comparison?

I think posting a 30-second video showing Matas making 4 three-pointers and saying "looks like he can be a 36% 3pt shooter" is absolutely meaningless, so I followed up with my own meaningless video.

[MrSparkle]

The talk of tanking because we probably won't have Demar, and maybe not Zach or Vuc, is actually very funny because there's plenty of evidence that they were exactly what was holding us back. Like simply swapping Demar for Giddey is likely to improve us. Simply swapping some of Vuc's minutes for whoever the 2025 version of Tony Bradley will likely improve us more, etc. Zach didn't really play last year, so he's a moot point. Only real likely detriment is if we lose Williams. If we don't, he and Ayo can replace Caruso IMO.

Demar and Caruso were probably good for a combined +10 wins. Hard to really quantify guys' wins-added with all the dynamics (maybe somebody else plays better), but IMO each guy's impact (DD on O, AC on D) has been pretty dramatic each season. Thus the deserved All-NBA/Defensive accolades.

Would it continue or decline? Is it replaceable by a larger committee? Maybe yes, maybe no. But generally speaking, moving to a younger committee of ball handlers and larger distribution of shots is something this team had to do. I don't think it's going to result in a better record.

IT COULD. 04/05 Bulls weren't supposed to be a 47-win team. And the Lauri tank Jazz ended up pulling them way out of Wemby range, due to a hot record the first half of the season. Hard to predict the emergence of young players.

[WindyCityBorn]

This guy too?

Watch on YouTube

Please tell me this is a joke and you don’t actually think this is reasonable or rational comparison?

I think posting a 30-second video showing Matas making 4 three-pointers and saying "looks like he can be a 36% 3pt shooter" is absolutely meaningless, so I followed up with my own meaningless video.

OK fair enough how about the fact that he shot close 40 percent from 3 over his last 10 G-League games and he was a good shooter in high school. The tools are there and some glimpses of production.

[dougthonus]

OK fair enough how about the fact that he shot close 40 percent from 3 over his last 10 G-League games and he was a good shooter in high school. The tools are there and some glimpses of production.

Being a good shooter in HS doesn't mean a whole lot to me, the line is so much closer that the shot mechanics to be a good shooter in HS are a lot different than the NBA. He was also only a good shooter in HS one of his years, not consistently, and the total number of attempts in that case is low enough to say variance/luck comes into play.

He may have shot well over his last 10 G-League games, but again, small sample size, and given his overall G-League percentage was under 30, it would mean that he was extraordinarily abysmal earlier, and again, variance.

Watching him mechanically, he looks like he could be a solid shooter, his release is pretty quick and fluid, looks a lot like Lonzo's and we'll just see if he has enough fine muscle motor control to improve the accuracy over time because the general pieces of it look okay but the results certainly aren't there yet.

[DuckIII]

Tanking for Cooper Flagg is the final piece.. get rid of everybody, gut it down to the studs.

Flagg and Matas would be interesting

We’re not really going to tank though. Not the way some teams are going to do it.

The good news is, that probably doesn't matter all that much. I know you are aware of this, but to re-iterate it, if you are the worst team in the league you are 50% picking 5th and 50% picking better than 5th. If we're the 7th worst team in the league our odds at #1 are 7.5% vs 14% for being the worst team. That's a big difference of course (almost 2x the chance) but you still have a reasonable shot at it by not being absolutely god awful.

Absolutely. I was just managing expectations. Even if we jettison Zach, Vuc and DDR, we’ll be experienced enough and talented enough that we won’t be scraping the bottom of the barrel like the Wizards or Nets, etc.

But we can do that and still get a great pick.

[BahamaBull]

I'm not normally a tanker, nor for giving young players court time until they earn it, but next year I'd be fine with -

Giddey
Coby/Ayo
Somebody (Pat?)
Matas
Somebody

Take my lumps, see what I have, collect a high draft pick.

Im ok with that too...Almost guarantee us a top 5 pick in next years loaded draft.

[kodo]

I agree with everyone else I'm skeptical about a strategic plan to tank from AK & ownership. What I'm delusionally hopeful for is that we're just that bad (we got #11 while trying to win) anyway and just get lucky. ATL was behind us and got #1. The flatter odds means a little more randomness.

It's also not a 1 player draft, Bailey is considered #1 material in normal drafts at this point. You never know, Ja ended up being better than Zion.

[nomorezorro]

i think we'll be pretty comfortably on the second-to-worst tier of teams if we lose derozan, and we might have an outside shot of hitting rock bottom if zach doesn't have a bounceback (half?) season or if we dump him for negligible return this summer.

a team whose best players are Extremely Washed Nikola Vucevic, josh giddey, coby white and ayo dosunmu is a really, really bad team. the young guards are nice pieces, but unless they take a major leap forward, they are not ready to be the load-bearing offensive centerpiece of a team. there were a ton of games last season where the kids weren't producing and the team offense looked like trash and demar had to step in and do his thing on his own. without that safety valve...it could get ugly.