The Chicago Bulls, having their eyes set firmly on beefing up their frontcourt presence, opted to go local with the No. 11 pick in the NBA draft, selecting 6-foot-9 forward Matas Buzelis. Coming from the NBA G League Ignite, a developmental program recently disbanded, Buzelis is not just a local boy done good; he’s a versatile addition expected to easily start playing alongside Bulls' big man Nikola Vučević. “I’m ready to win, man,” Buzelis said, his ambition clear in an interview with ESPN. “I was born for this,” he boldly asserted, his statement shared by the Chicago Tribune.
Despite not leading the league in shooting efficiency, the Bulls seem to deliberately pick players who are allegedly supposed to turn into shooting projects. With Buzelis, they continue the trend; his 27.3% from the arc doesn’t exactly scream sniper just yet. That said, the young player is more than eager to improve wherever needed. “Whatever the coach tells me to do, I’m going to do to the best of my abilities,” Buzelis committed, according to the same Tribune report.
Bulls executive vice president of basketball operations Artūras Karnišovas sees Buzelis fitting snugly into the NBA's shift toward multipositional wings, providing not just size and athleticism but also that oh-so-coveted switchability. "His versatility, it's very evident," Karnišovas told the Tribune. Meanwhile, with their front office undergoing a reshuffling of the deck as it were, trading Alex Caruso and gauging the market for Zach LaVine, Chicago is not exactly shy about shaking things up. To say it's a period of transformation for the Bulls would be something of an understatement.
Across the NBA landscape, the 2024 draft’s first round unfurled with less of the usual hype, lacking the sparkle of a single transformative talent but filled nonetheless with international promise. The Atlanta Hawks bagged Zaccharie Risacher as the No. 1 pick, while the Washington Wizards took Alexandre Sarr at No. 2 – both hailing from France, as detailed by the Chicago Sun-Times. Even with various trade possibilities swirling about, the Bulls chose to stay put, banking on Buzelis to maybe, just maybe, shoot them back to competitiveness. As for the rest of the draft? The second round will have just to wait for another day at ESPN’s Studios-Seaport in New York.
