Just how good is Matas Buzelis? If he's a good starter, the Bulls still have a long way to go in rebuilding this roster. If he's a franchise cornerstone, they're much closer than it seems to building something exciting. It's still too early to tell where exactly on that sliding scale the 21 year-old will fall, but it's the question that will determine a lot of things for the Bulls in the backhalf of the 2020s.
In year two, Buzelis has nearly doubled his scoring output while keeping his efficiency pretty much the same. That's great! He'll head into his year-22 season hoping for another jump, perhaps one to a 20-plus point per game guy.
If that's the evolution for Buzelis in year three, it will give Bulls fans even more encouragement that Buzelis is their future franchise player and not just a nice starter who they will lock down on a medium-sized rookie extension.
How will the Bulls build around Buzelis?
The most important thing is to not get stuck in another Coby White situation. By that, I mean a player who develops into a viable starter within the Bulls' system but is stuck between being asked to be a star and being a role player then is eventually traded for scraps.
Buzelis almost certainly has a higher ceiling than White, for the record. He can do some pretty thrilling things with the ball in his hands that few players his size are capable of doing. Becoming even more comfortable with the ball in his hands frequently is a big next step, and one that may get him from a Harrison Barnes career arc to a Pascal Siakam one.
If you squint at Buzelis making plays in the fourth quarter against the Rockets earlier this week, you can see some Paul George in there, too. Taking the ball up the court, hitting catch-and-shoot 3-pointers, making plays off the dribble, being an off-ball weapon next to Josh Giddey. It doesn't take much imagination to see Buzelis as a perennial All-Star candidate.
It's also important to get Buzelis some talented teammates to let him at least audition for the part of franchise cornerstone. Right now, the roster is so low on talent that it doesn't feel like Buzelis is getting a fair shot at that. In other words, a strong offseason would help in more ways than one. Dinking around the low-play-in territory this team is so obsessed with will not cut it anymore.