LOS ANGELES — Matas Buzelis swears Luka Dončić started it.
In a game of overblown offense, the second-year Chicago Bulls forward found himself caught in a war of words with the NBA’s leading scorer.
The pair began to exchange words early in the second half, cracking the type of crooked smiles that hardly concealed the competitiveness driving both players to chirp and ridicule and needle one another on both ends of the court. There’s no exact science to winning trash talk. But in this particular battle, there was a clear winner and loser.
Dončić dropped 12 points in quick succession on the second-year forward. After nailing a step-back 3-pointer over Buzelis, the Los Angeles Lakers star guard stuck his face close to Buzelis to mean-mug the forward as they jogged back down the court. Later, Dončić flapped his hand open and closed while taunting the younger player: “Keep talking.”
By the time he checked out with just less than two minutes left on the clock, Dončić had scored 51 points to anchor a brutal 142-130 beatdown of the Bulls. What did Buzelis learn from this tête-à-tête? The forward was blunt: “Probably not to talk to him.”
For his part, Dončić claimed after the game that Buzelis said something to him that would have earned the Lakers star a technical foul. Buzelis declined to elaborate on his own words, but he defended his role in the chatter — and maintained that Dončić threw the first verbal punch.
The Bulls forward said his on-court temperament was molded by his experience playing under longtime Chicago AAU coach Mac Irvin, who always preached that once a player started talking smack in a game, the player had to uphold that same intensity through the final whistle.
“I don’t back down from anybody,” Buzelis said. “If somebody starts talking first, I’ll say something. I don’t really start anything in the NBA. I just play my game. But I feel like if somebody says something, you have to respond as a competitor.”
Getting backed down by Dončić was only one piece of an embarrassing bloodbath for the Bulls that highlighted every facet of this team’s defensive deficiencies. The Bulls can’t begin to dream of competing until they begin to shore up their defense. Making that leap starts and ends with Buzelis.
Much of the attention paid to Buzelis in his sophomore season is fixated on his ability to create shots at a high volume. And he certainly flexed his playmaking development against the Lakers, knocking down four 3-pointers while scoring 22 points. Fresh off a career-best 41-point performance against the Golden State Warriors, Buzelis is beginning to string together the type of high-profile performances necessary to buoy another underwhelming Bulls season.
But Buzelis wants to stake his name on his adaptability as a two-way player. To achieve that goal, he has to balance his offensive output with a level of defensive stamina that can slow down the best of the league — a challenge the Lakers easily provide.
Buzelis is accustomed to taking the toughest defensive matchup on any given night. But few teams bring a nastier one-two wallop than the Lakers, who kept the forward busy flitting back and forth between Dončić and LeBron James.
“LeBron, Dončić — these guys are All-NBA, Hall of Fame players,” Bulls coach Billy Donovan said. “And Matas is a young guy. I thought he leaned into the challenge. I don’t think anybody stops those guys one-on-one. You need help. … You never want any player against Dončić or LeBron or even (Austin) Reeves for that matter to be on an island trying to play one-on-one.”
The first half showed promise. Buzelis didn’t blink at the top of the second quarter as James gathered the ball in one hand to scan the offense from inside the arc. The Bull stuck out his hand, palm smacking the pass before it fully gained momentum. As James watched in bemusement, Buzelis surged upcourt with the ball in tow, slinging a pass to guard Yuki Kawamura to advance an unguarded fast break.
Kawamura tossed the ball off the backboard. Buzelis caught the ricochet and slammed it through the rim. The Harlem Globetrotters reproduction earned a smattering of applause even from the unfriendly Crypto.com Arena audience.
YUKI OFF THE BACKBOARD TO MATAS.@KawamuraYuki | @CHSN__ pic.twitter.com/yGD8x7EOOD
— Chicago Bulls (@chicagobulls) March 13, 2026
Levity is not a frequent component of Bulls basketball this season. In fact, that play might have been the most fun the Bulls had on the court in a minute. It also illustrated one of the few foundational building blocks on this roster: Life is better for the Bulls when Buzelis is in a defensive groove.
Buzelis had the first of his two blocks in the first 55 seconds of play. He slapped a lazy inbounds pass from Dončić into the front row on a baseline out-of-bounds play. Buzelis snagged two steals, tracking a lob over his left shoulder like a cornerback to intercept a full-court heave from James.
But it didn’t last long. That handful of disruption from Buzelis wasn’t enough to slow the slew of offensive firepower from the Lakers, which only gained momentum as the game grinded onward. The Bulls gave up 41 points in both the second and third quarters. And as the Lakers turned up the heat, the Bulls melted into it.
Buzelis didn’t log another block or steal after the first half, but he was only a small piece of the problem. Donovan attributed this drop-off to the sheer volume of minutes Buzelis has played on the team’s recent West Coast swing. The forward played nearly 19 minutes in the first half after playing 45 against the Warriors on Tuesday — and despite still being under a recovery protocol for an ankle sprain.
The forward, of course, cannot be expected to single-handedly solve the defensive woes of a bottom-10 defense. The Bulls gave up 30 second-chance points while allowing the Lakers to score 72 points in the paint. The Lakers shot 47.2% from behind the arc as the Bulls continue to struggle to slow teams at the perimeter.
Losing to the Lakers ultimately helped the Bulls in the long run. The Bulls remained a half-game ahead of the Milwaukee Bucks in the draft-lottery standings.
But as bleak losses pile up at the end of another disappointing season, this defensive disconnect remains a clear focal point for the team’s plans to build a better future.
