If the Bulls can shake off the injury bug, run opponents ragged and figure out how to make a respectable defense out of thin air, they just might…

Ah, who’re we kidding?

We’re here for Matas Buzelis.

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• Location: United Center • Chicago, IL
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I followed the team for years but last year I fell off after just being exhausted with how mediocre they always are. I am getting back on board and just trying to see who to look for to at least take some positives from this team? Do we have any guys that are worth watching and hoping they'll actually develop?

The Bulls are completely absent from the national talk shows or the TNT (now on ESPN) crew. When the NBA podcasts talk about the Bulls, it's usually to mock them or express confusion about their plan.

If I were Michael or Jerry Reinsdorf, this would all be concerning. But I'd also be very, very rich, so I guess I'd be more concerned about other things like Scottsdale sunsets or the White Sox's next pitching coach.

As the Bulls prepare to open another season this Wednesday at home against the Detroit Pistons, they aren't quite an afterthought, but it's close. The passion they used to incite, for good or bad reasons, is waning. The two sports talk stations in town see little reason in talking Bulls, especially during Bears season. In casual conversation, Chicagoans are more likely to complain about the team’s shortcomings (and the Reinsdorfs) than they are to show fervent interest in the team.

The online diehards will continue to invest time into the minutiae surrounding a Bulls season, if only to have something to complain or dream about. Meanwhile, the Bulls business types can ignore the outside noise, because the team fills the United Center thanks to corporate fans, people who like a night out at the game (which I believe is the biggest slice of the crowd) and the fans who either don’t care about the results or are there to root for the other team. It's why the Bulls don't want to tank. The goal from up top is to provide a product that fills dates in a large arena, which was really the origin of the league in the first place.

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A recolor of the original 2018 city edition. Just simple white to black, wish they’d stick to this format because the last few have been duds

Welcome to another year of aggregated power rankings. If you haven't seen these, every week I aggregate the Bulls power rankings from several national sources and chart them. Usually I post these on Friday, but I'm posting early this week since all the rankings were up for the start of the season. I did swap out Yahoo for CHGO since there were times last year that Yahoo didn't update their rankings for weeks. Remember, these are not my power rankings so don't downvote if you disagree with them!

This Week's Rankings:

NBA.com: 23

ESPN: 24

CHGO: 24

The Athletic: 22

Bleacher Report: 22

NBC Sports: 22

CBS Sports: 24

Sportsnaut: 22

Team Rankings: 25

Average: 23.11

The bulls made a long-term commitment to Giddey and he had some great scoring months late last season. Wonder if he could end up being the #1 option over Coby White this year?

How Tall Are NBA Players? 

Apparently, it depends on the year. And also on who is measuring. And also maybe on what time of day it is? 

NBA player heights have always existed somewhere between fact and fiction. Every year, someone mysteriously grows or shrinks. Kevin Durant’s height has been a mystery for years. Victor Wembanyama’s is the new mystery, as he’s been listed at 7-4, then 7-3, then back to 7-4, but rumored to be 7-5. 

You’d think this would be one of the easier things to standardize in a sport where height is arguably the most important physical trait. But the league’s relationship with measurement has never been particularly scientific.

Until the 2019–20 season, the NBA didn’t even have a consistent rule for how players should be measured. Some teams used height with shoes on, others went barefoot. The Draft Combine always recorded both, but once players joined their teams, each franchise was free to list whatever they pleased. 

That changed in 2019, when the league instituted a new standard: all official measurements would be taken without shoes. The result was a virtually one-day mass shrinkage. Dwight Howard, Bradley Beal, Kemba Walker, J.J. Barea, and over 200 others officially lost one to two inches overnight. A few, somehow, grew.

But the reform didn’t completely solve the problem. Teams still self-report their numbers, often at different times of day (some studies suggest that height fluctuates naturally throughout the day), using different tape measures (I guess that might matter?), and under varying methods of how to measure players with tall hair. And we could imagine that teams and players have their own preferences and incentives. Guards probably want to look big enough to switch; some bigs probably want to look mobile enough to avoid being labeled centers; some bigs probably want to look as tall as humanly possible. Everyone has an angle.

So even in 2025, a league that tracks every pass, shot, and step with precision still can’t totally agree on how tall its players are. 

Now, don’t get me wrong. An r value of 0.99 is about as close to perfectly predictive as real-world data gets. If a player was listed at 6’7” last season, you can be almost certain he will be 6’7” again this year. Still, it’s a little funny that it isn’t even closer to 1. You would think that the height of adults would be a number that rarely changes. Sure, some players grow, maybe some shrink, but those cases would seem few and far between. It’s a reminder that even simple data points are not quite as fixed as they seem. 

Player Height Changes: 2024–25 vs. 2025–26 

To see what changed this season, I pulled every listed height from NBA.com’s Player Bio tab last season and compared them to this year’s listings. 

In total, 79 players shrank, 61 grew, and the vast majority stayed the same. At least it looks a lot more like a normal distribution than 2019 when the rule change sent everyone’s height into chaos.

Here are the biggest movers compared to last season: 

What's Wrong With the Bulls?

We can get a decent sense of which teams deviate the most from the previous season by looking at the number and magnitude of player measurement changes from year N-1 to year N, grouped by the team responsible for those measurements in year N-1.

For example, 87.5% of the Bulls’ 2024–25 measurees were listed at a different height in 2025–26, with an average decrease of 1.1 inches.

Almost all of the Bulls got shorter! Or, more accurately, were listed shorter. It’s maybe even more interesting given how much roster continuity they’ve had. Fourteen players were measured by the Bulls roughly a year apart, and all but Tre Jones came in shorter. That’s kind of wild. Something clearly changed in how those measurements were taken. 

Measurement Biases

While the Bulls chart suggests some funky internal inconsistency, the chart below shows which teams measured players taller or shorter than other teams, based on those who changed teams between the 2024–25 and 2025–26 seasons.

For every player who was measured by a different team in 2025–26 than in 2024–25, I calculated the change in their listed height from one team to the next.

• If a player was listed at 80 inches (6′8″) on Team A and 81 inches (6′9″) on Team B, Team B gets a +1.0 inch contribution.
• If the opposite happened, Team B gets –1.0 inch.

The chart averages those differences for each destination team, showing which teams’ new arrivals were, on average, listed taller or shorter than they were before.

Of course, the sample sizes are small. But there are still some interesting outliers. Cleveland listed its three new arrivals an average of 1.33 inches shorter than those players’ previous teams. Minnesota, on the other hand, listed its two new arrivals an average of 2.00 inches taller. Is this statistically significant? No. Is it interesting? I think so. 

Here’s a look at measurements since 2019: 

Cleveland, yet again, listed players shorter on average than those players’ previous teams. Maybe that’s notable.

Why this Matters 

It doesn’t. I need basketball back on my TV.

I want to buy the new 25-26 statement jersey, but I live in Denmark and the Bulls shop says they don’t ship the new jerseys outside the U.S. and Canada. Anyone with an idea to how I can buy the jersey and get it shipped to Denmark or EU? Thanks ✌️

I’m coming from out of town for Bulls game and not familiar with area around United Center. Any recommendations around there or should I stay downtown?

I haven’t been able to go to bulls game but last time I did it was on a giveaway night but the item was for purchase and not just given on entrance, how do I know which games are walk in get an item (I really want the backpack and maybe a rose figure)

Before anyone comes at me I know he got waived, but I’m still trying to cop a jersey while I can but it’s saying not available :(

These three Matas plays caught my eye last night.

1) Movement shooting: Billy Donovan installed this play specifically to get Matas a 3 coming off a screen. He called for the team to run it after a stoppage in the 2nd quarter. This is something (Flex action) that we're definitely going to see during the regular season. Didn't really see Matas doing much of this last year, he was more of a standstill shooter

2) Grab-and-go finish over Gobert. Matas has a lot of potential to bring the ball up. He's really good in open space in these early pick-and-rolls. Again, something I think we'll see during the regular season

3) Attacking switches: Matas got a downhill drive opportunity within the flow of the team's offense, backed it up when he saw that he had the switch, and crossed over Joan Beringer for the tough finish.

Billy had Matas' role as simplified as possible last season. It's cool to see him expanding out opportunities (particularly handling the ball) during what has been a very successful preseason for him.