The education of the Bulls' Matas Buzelis from a thousand miles away

Zach LaVine wasn’t done putting up shots late Wednesday night.

The long-time Bulls guard burst into his old locker room with a towel in hand, saw his former “student” surrounded by the postgame cameras and microphones, and tossed the towel directly at Matas Buzelis’ head while the forward was in mid-sentence. Nothing but net.

Really the only way to slow Buzelis down all night.

Because LaVine and the Kings definitely didn’t have an answer for the second-year Bulls forward on the court, as he finished with 27 points in the 13-point win, and did so on 11-of-18 shooting, including 4-of-6 from three-point range.

After the interview was over, Buzelis was able to hug it out with LaVine one last time before the visiting party had to depart, but that didn’t mean the two still wouldn’t be talking. Even since LaVine was traded to Sacramento last February, they still haven’t stopped talking.

That was the relationship they built last season.

In Buzelis’ eyes LaVine was the superstar high-flier he grew up watching, and in LaVine’s eyes Buzelis was a can’t miss prospect who asked all the right questions.

That’s why even early on last season, LaVine was one of Buzelis’ bigger hype men, telling the media frequently about how good the kid could be. He’s proving to be spot on.

“No, this is just the trajectory that he’s going to be on,” LaVine said when asked if he was surprised how quickly Buzelis has climbed. “The athleticism and mindset were always there. Every time I came back and worked at the Advocate Center he was asking me, ‘Can I come in with you?’ You’re just going to see his development get better and better. He can do it all. The more he hones in on his shot and shot creation off the dribble, he’s a three-level scorer. Then combo that with his defensive ability and ability to get to the hoop, I’m not surprised. I just want him to keep getting better.”

A plan both men agree on.

But Buzelis also went out of his way to publicly thank LaVine for the time he invested in him over the last year. Even if he still has questions for LaVine despite being thousands of miles away and wearing different color jerseys, he gets a response.

“I pay my homage to him; he’s an amazing guy,” Buzelis said. “He answers all the questions I have, texts, amazing role model. He was a superstar teammate. He was a great leader, and I thank him for still answering the phone, and that’s my guy.”

LaVine isn’t the only one helping in the education of Buzelis, however. It’s a village and Bulls coach Billy Donovan is the mayor of that town.

That’s why after a disappointing three-point performance in Orlando last week in which Buzelis was in foul trouble all night, he pulled Donovan aside and had a heart-to-heart with his coach about not letting that happen again.

“When things don’t go well for him, he takes it and uses it as a learning experience, kind of comes back better from it, and he leans into that stuff,” Donovan said. “I think that’s why, quite honestly, he’s been able to progress at the rate that he’s progressed at because he takes his experience and learns from them. But he doesn’t get down and dwell on it. He kind of just moves onto the next thing.

“Listen, there’s going to be a lot of those moments where you come out of a game like Orlando, whether it was foul trouble or a certain matchup he got, where there’s still going to be a lot of growth for him, but I love the way he tries to compete, the way he plays, and how driven he is to be a really, really good player.”