The 2025 NBA trade deadline is long gone. Everyone in the league should be moved on. But the lost opportunity (or opportunities) for the Chicago Bulls to finally dive completely head first into a rebuild still finds ways to rankle fans.
After over a year of chatter, the front office pulled the trigger on a Zach LaVine trade, dealing the team's leading scorer and highest-paid player to the Sacramento Kings. Chicago received 70 cents on the dollar at best, however, landing veterans Tre Jones, Kevin Huerter and Zach Collins.
The most exciting part of the return package for the Bulls was their own protected first-round pick that was sent to the San Antonio Spurs four years ago as part of the DeMar DeRozan trade.
Thirteen-year veteran center Nikola Vucevic, who was having a career year offensively, remained in Chicago despite the Bulls reportedly receiving multiple offers for him. Since the deadline passed, the 34-year-old's shooting percentages have plummeted and he's missed the team's last four games with a calf injury. It's fair to say his value has tanked.
The Bulls turned down a first-round pick to keep Lonzo Ball and promptly re-signed the 26-year-old to a new two-year contract. Coby White and Ayo Dosunmu had potential suitors as two young guards on team-friendly deals.
Chicago Vice President of Basketball Operations Arturas Karnisovas and General Manager Marc Eversley deserve credit for trading LaVine when his value was at its highest. They also deserve blame for the return they got for their best player and for not doing more to hasten the franchise's drop to the bottom of the standings.
But several factors, some of them trade-deadline related, have at least created an opportunity for the Bulls' possible franchise centerpiece to emerge from the shadows.
Matas Buzelis is making the most of his developmental minutes
Chicago drafted Matas Buzelis with the 11th overall pick in the 2024 draft. The 6-foot-10 forward, an Illinois native, was a raw but physically gifted prospect coming off a disappointing season with the G League Ignite. Buzelis can run like a guard, explode like a wing and block shots like a forward; he just happened to be a wildly inefficient scorer in the G League.
Bulls Head Coach Billy Donovan was hesitant to give his rookie significant minutes right out of the gate and understandably so. Chicago was a surprisingly overachieving team and Buzelis hadn't grasped the intricacies of NBA basketball, especially on the defensive end.
Shortly before the trade deadline though, Buzelis began to earn more minutes. And whether it's because the Bulls are finally starting to embrace the tank or Donovan simply relented and chose to hand him more playing time, the 20-year-old has started every game since LaVine's departure.
Before Feb. 2, Buzelis had crossed the 25-minute threshold three times. Since then, he's averaging 27.4 minutes per game.
Before the LaVine trade, he had reached double digits in field goal attempts four times. Since the deadline, he's averaging 10.8 per game.
Through the first 47 games of the season, Buzelis averaged 5.3 points, 2.8 rebounds and 0.8 blocks on 39.8 percent shooting from the field and 35.2 percent shooting from three. In Chicago's last 13 games, he's averaging 13.5 points, 3.8 rebounds and 2.1 assists while shooting 49 percent from the field. He also leads the team in blocked shots.
Buzelis isn't a like-for-like replacement for LaVine, but he's certainly getting a chance to prove himself since the Bulls dealt their star guard. Even if the trade deadline was a bust from an organizational perspective, the opportunity for Chicago to now see what it has in its most recent lottery pick has to be considered a win.