Takeaways from the Chicago Bulls’ loss to the Knicks, including a spark between Matas Buzelis and Caleb Wilson

For years, the Chicago Bulls have been waiting on a one-two punch.

In the second quarter of Wednesday's 133-127 loss to the New York Knicks at the United Center, Caleb Wilson and Matas Buzelis delivered it.

It started with a right hook. Jordan Clarkson caught Buddy Hield overcorrecting at the arc and took a straight-line drive to the basket. Wilson met him there, timing his jump to match the guard at the peak of his trajectory and smack the ball away with his right hand. Hield grabbed the rebound and flipped it up to Wilson. The rookie took one dribble, two more steps and then lofted a pass in a deft parabola to find the hands of Buzelis.

Buzelis had been struggling. Again. He started this season a little off key, never finding the right harmony to complement Wilson as the melody of the team. He overshot his dunk attempts, missed wildly on blocks, fumbled passes out of bounds. But against the Knicks, the pair finally struck the same chord. And when Buzelis grabbed that pass out of the air, double-clutching on his way to a dunk, the Bulls could hear for a moment the tune of a new future for this team.

For the first four games of this season, Wilson has stood out — albeit through immense growing pains — while Buzelis tried to figure out his role as a complementary piece. It's not an immediate fit. Wilson plays roughly the same position as Buzelis, although he is already slightly longer and heftier than the third-year forward. His arrival has scaled Buzelis down on the rotation chart, requiring him to guard backcourt players and take on a higher load of ball-handling and facilitation responsibilities.

This is a learning experience Buzelis has welcomed. But he gets frustrated. Understandably so. He was benched in the fourth quarter of Chicago's first win of the season. At times in the first four games of the year, it felt as if the Bulls played their most winning basketball when Buzelis was not on the court. Aspects of that frustration seeped into Wednesday's loss. Buzelis stepped on the line twice before shooting — and making — two separate 3-pointers, earning a whistle and a turnover. He airballed a 3-pointer in clutch time. He scored only two points in the fourth quarter.

But that moment of connection between Buzelis and Wilson was enough to refresh excitement around the pair's future together for the Bulls. Wilson scored 20 points. Buzelis scored 17. The pair closed the game together. And while the Bulls fell six points short of their intended goal, they took a step toward establishing a stronger long-term partnership between their most important pairing.

"Matas is my guy off the court and on the court," Wilson said. "I love playing with him. He had a great game tonight and I'm excited to see him keep flourishing and getting better every night. I want to connect on a bunch more lobs both ways. I just feel like it's a step in the right direction."

Here are three more takeaways from the loss.

It takes pure effort to unseat a team from its throne. Early in the second quarter, the Bulls determined exactly how many joules of exertion it took to rise to that challenge.

OG Anunoby and Karl-Anthony Towns went crashing to the ground and the Bulls went racing to the other end of the court. Josh Giddey took a 3-pointer in transition, then tore off the moment the ball left his hand in pursuit of the rebound. Matas Buzelis beat him to the punch, tearing the ball out of the air and jamming it back into the basket with a dunk.

The Knicks called a timeout the moment the basket was scored. The Bulls needed it, too. They were gassed, players gasping with the exertion of trying to run the Knicks out of their gym. But that effort was exactly what it took for the 1-3 Bulls to edge out ahead of the Knicks, who are suffering a slow start of their own this season. A buzzer-beater 3-pointer from Tre Jones put the Bulls up 62-56 to enter the second half, earning a thunderous — and almost surprised — roar from the crowd.

The Bulls led by as many as 19 points, but the Knicks chipped away at that deficit with the steady assurance of a high-powered team with plenty of winning under its belt. Jalen Brunson took decisive control in the fourth quarter, crossing up Powell so violently that he almost sent the veteran fully to his knees on one play and slinging three 3s in the final quarter alone. Landry Shamet and Jordan Clarkson also lit up on offense off the bench, combining for six 3s.

The ultimate backbreaker for the Bulls, however, was something familiar — second chances. The Knicks doubled the Bulls on the offensive boards over the entire course of the game. And they secured three of those offensive rebounds in the final quarter, scoring six second-chance points that ultimately determined the final differential.

Bulls coach Tiago Splitter wanted to let his team play free in the clutch, opting to forego a timeout to draw up a play when Giddey secured a rebound with 24 seconds left and the Bulls trailing by only three points. The ensuing off-the-cuff play resulted in a missed 3 by Powell.

"I thought we could get a good shot when they were not set and they were not with the matchup they liked," Splitter said. "I thought we could get something out of it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Today it didn't work."

"And now of course I regret not calling timeout," Splitter added with a wry smile.

The bad luck had to end at some point. The Bulls were the worst shooting team in the entire NBA through their first four games, going only 40-for-168 (23.8%) from deep in that span. But against the Knicks, the drought finally broke. The Bulls went 18-for-42 from behind the arc, led by four 3s from Norman Powell and a trio apiece from Wilson, Buzelis and Jalen Smith.

The Bulls are unlikely to shoot above 42% very often this season, but this course correction shows their original shooting slump isn't an accurate encapsulation of the team's shooting ability. Continued strong shooting from Wilson and Buzelis will be crucial for the Bulls to sustain their scoring.