It was initially just a one-word answer from Lonzo Ball.
“Effort,” the Bulls guard replied a few weeks back when asked about how to improve the sinking defense.
He wasn’t wrong, but he also wasn’t 100% accurate. There’s another reason the Bulls have had the sixth-best defensive efficiency rating (114.1) in the month of December so far.
Actually, make that six reasons.
Brooklyn, San Antonio, Indiana, Philadelphia, Charlotte and Toronto.
Those have been the six opponents for the Bulls so far this December, and not one of them is in the top half of the league in offensive efficiency for the month. Brooklyn and Charlotte were bottom four.
So yes, the effort has been better but so has the schedule. And the good news for coach Billy Donovan and his staff is they still have the third-easiest schedule left this season.
Why is this defensive improvement – schedule or not – suddenly important? For the roster as a whole or the standings it’s not, but the fact that there is a focus on that side of the ball individually and rookie Matas Buzelis seems to be embracing his role in that? Priceless in his development.
Individual defensive efficiency is a very subjective statistic.
There’s a lot of ways to bend it.
Take this season’s Bulls for example. Ball leads the team (112.5) in that stat and there’s no argument in his defensive abilities. It passes the eye test.
But Josh Giddey is fifth overall (116), and there have been way too many blow-bys from opposing guards to come away thinking Giddey is a top five defender on the roster.
Buzelis, however, is third (114.7) and feels like an up-and-coming force in the frontcourt defensively. He’s added some physicality to his game and within a few seasons there’s no reason that he can’t be an elite rim protector because of his athleticism and his ability to react on backside help.
That’s why several scouts have compared Buzelis to former Utah standout Andrei Kirilenko. Known as “AK-47,” Kirilenko was built similar to Buzelis – even an inch smaller at 6-9 – but led the NBA in blocks (3.3 per game) in 2005 and was an All-NBA defender three times.
Even as a rookie, Kirilenko flashed as a rim protector, averaging 1.9 blocks in 26.2 minutes per game. Over this stretch of six games, Buzelis has averaged 19 minutes and was registering 1.3 blocks per game.
There’s something there with the 20-year-old, and something the Bulls could build on as they figure out how to navigate the rest of the season.
What Bulls fans need to prepare themselves for is a scenario in which the front office finds out they can’t move trade assets like Ball, Nikola Vucevic and Zach LaVine – as hard as they will try – and rather than focusing on the loaded 2025 draft class, they turn the attention to a ’26 draft class that is also gaining momentum as being elite.
Thanks to Monday’s win in Toronto, the Bulls entered Tuesday 12-15, holding down the 10th-worst record in the Association. If the Bulls finish outside the top 10 in the lottery that ’25 first-round pick goes to San Antonio.
Executive vice president of basketball Arturas Karnisovas knows the numbers and sitting 10th only gives him a 3% chance to land No. 1, a 13.9% chance to be in the top four, 65.9% chance to stay at No. 10, and 19% to fall to No. 11 and draw dead as far as the pick goes.
In the meanwhile, making sure that Buzelis continues developing on both ends of the floor is key for his next drafted running-mate, whether the team finds him this June or June of ’26.