Matas Buzelis remains reluctant to describe exactly how his game will look different this upcoming season, but the Bulls forward promised it will. And if it goes according to his expectations, it just might be something special.
“Obviously we haven’t played a game yet, but I feel like I’m going to have a little more freedom to do … I can’t speak on exactly what, but once it happens, I feel like there’s going to be more freedom for me,” Buzelis said with the team’s training camp underway. “Offensively, be way more aggressive defensively. I don’t really want to speak on how it’s going to be because you expect one thing and the next thing happens, but what I feel right now is I will have more freedom to play how I want.”
An indictment on how he was told to play in the past under the old regime of executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas and coach Billy Donovan?
Maybe.
But more likely that Buzelis has had offensive expectations communicated to him more clearly.
Donovan made it public several times last season that he wasn’t taking the mid-range away from his young forward but rather wanted him taking a good mid-range.
The year prior, Buzelis entered his rookie campaign with a Dirk Nowitzki-one-legged-fadeaway that he had in his bag from the G League, and after going 5-of-17 (29.4%) from mid-range that season, Donovan not only wanted that move out of his bag, but in a trash can.
Last season, he shot 19 mid-range shots, hitting on eight (42.1%).
A source did say that Karnisovas and the analytics department did stress to Buzelis to stay completely away from mid-range shots if he could help it, and it sounded like two different messages from two different places.
Either way, Buzelis, who felt like he shot too many threes at times last year, now feels like the handcuffs are off. Maybe because the message from new coach Tiago Splitter is loud and clear.
“I like good threes,” Splitter said of Buzelis. “I think if he’s forcing threes that’s not a good thing. I also don’t think that he cannot shoot mid-range. That’s not how I see it. Now sometimes mid-range is a bad shot for that specific play, but you just got to be smart.
“I think he’s overthinking it a little bit. Just play basketball.”
Splitter would know a thing or two about the mid-range and its ability to be productive. After all, he spent four seasons in San Antonio playing with a maestro of the mid-range in Kawhi Leonard.
To put the numbers in perspective just last year, while Buzelis put up 19 mid-range shots, Leonard averaged 9.3 mid-range shots per game in the 2025-26 campaign and hit 51.4%
“Sometimes mid-range is the best shot you take in a possession,” Splitter said. “In general, layups, fouls, corner threes, catch-and-shoot threes, those are the best, but sometimes, some situations you might have to take a pull-up three, pull-up two, it’s just part of the game. You’ve got to read every play and make a decision on what shot is the best.”
A process that Buzelis is still working through, especially with a new-look roster with three new starters from last season.
What that will eventually look like? That’s the wait-and-see. But Buzelis feels pretty good about what the result will be.
“I feel like I’m going to have a little bit more leeway of how I play than last year,” Buzelis added. “I feel very confident in what I can do.”
