The Chicago Bulls' aim this season, above all else, should be to sort out a tangible direction for their freshly-minted rebuild.
New lead executive Bryson Graham has given them an injection of vision this offseason, and their leap up to fourth overall in the NBA Draft Lottery helped them land a potential star of the future in Caleb Wilson. But for the most part, much of the peripheral talent on this team are still holdovers from the last regime.
This team's task in 2026-27 is going to be to figure out which players—like Patrick Williams, Isaac Okoro, Leonard Miller, and Rob Dillingham—should be pieces of this roster moving forward. But all of that is changeable, ever-shifting. Chicago has enough flexibility over the next couple of seasons to go through multiple iterations of that challenge.
But Matas Buzelis will become extension-eligible next offseason, and that's the first true task that will help make or break this rebuild for Graham's front office. Is Buzelis the star player they want to pay as a cornerstone of the team moving forward? If Chicago plays its cards wrong here, there's a chance this saga could hamstring the rebuild before it even truly gets going.
There's no right answer yet to this conundrum, but it will be a storyline to closely monitor over the course of 2026-27.
Chicago's looming Matas Buzelis extension needs to be undertaken with the future in mind
First and foremost, it's important to acknowledge that the Bulls don't necessarily need to extend Buzelis next offseason. He's only entering his third NBA campaign, and Chicago certainly has the option to wait and allow Buzelis to enter restricted free agency. For any team with questions or doubts about a player and their value on the open market, that's always a viable option.
But the Bulls would certainly like Buzelis to get ahead of those questions in 2026-27.
We already saw Buzelis take a major leap last season, ramping up his scoring and looking more confident with the ball in his hands on almost a game-to-game basis. He finished the campaign averaging 16.3 points, 5.8 rebounds, and 2.1 assists while shooting 34.9% from beyond the arc on healthy volume.
In terms of long-term fit with this roster, though, much will hinge on his and Wilson's ability to figure out a workable balance in the frontcourt. Can Buzelis hit his perimeter shots (and operate off-ball) at a consistent enough rate to maximize the value in that partnership? Can he build up enough of a complementary playmaking portfolio to feel comfortable about him developing into a complete player in the long-term?
If Buzelis were to take a major leap next season, there's no doubt the Bulls would be happy to pay him whatever he commands in regards to the market. At his current trajectory, that would likely sit somewhere around $30 million annually over four or five years.
But as the Bulls continue to add young talent, they can't afford to fork over that number (or even higher) to Buzelis if he doesn't show improvement in these key areas. Letting Buzelis walk likely isn't an option for Graham. But do they give him the chance to enter true stardom in 2027-28 if this upcoming season doesn't go according to plan? Or, conversely, if he does take that leap this season, will the Bulls be willing to gamble on his ability to sustain that level of production over the duration of his second contract?
There's almost never a clearly correct answer when it comes to restricted free agents who still have certain gaps in their games. Just look at Jalen Duren and the Detroit Pistons this offseason, or Chicago's own saga with Josh Giddey last year.
As much as Graham's minor moves this season will have a bearing on the direction of the rebuild, how he handles the Buzelis extension will be the first major decision that has significant bearing over the next half-decade of Bulls basketball. He needs to get it right, as difficult as that may seem at the moment.
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