CHICAGO — Matas Buzelis has been in need of a reset.

The third-year forward never felt entirely like himself in the first 10 games of the Chicago Bulls season. His statistics are down. So is his confidence. Buzelis doesn’t have a good explanation for either. At times, he gets back to himself for a possession or a half. But it always slips away, fleeting and elusive. For most of this season, Buzelis has felt as if he was chasing something he used to take for granted.

“I feel like I’m in the right position right now to be very aggressive and do what I do,” Buzelis said after Wednesday’s second-half collapse in a loss to the San Antonio Spurs. “You’ve seen that. You’ve seen it in the first half. But it has to carry over to the whole game. That’s just how to be a pro.”

This week, the opportunity to reestablish himself was delivered with force. The Bulls will spend the next month recalibrating without rookie star Caleb Wilson, who underwent surgery Thursday to fix a fracture in his right hand. And for Buzelis, this adjustment period — beginning with Friday’s game against the Atlanta Hawks at the United Center — will serve a crucial opportunity to reset a season that already has gone off the rails.

Call it a silver lining or a glass-half-full mentality. But if the Bulls hope to get the most out of this period without their budding star, that effort starts and ends with Buzelis.

The truth is inescapable. Buzelis has struggled to play alongside Wilson in the early weeks of the season. The pair played 206 minutes together in the first 10 games, of which the Bulls lost nine. Outside of several transition sequences in which Buzelis fed Wilson for a fast-break lob — or vice versa — the pair still hasn’t found its comfort zone to play off one another.

At times, coach Tiago Splitter has worked through this weakness by making Buzelis the first substitute out of the game, then slotting him in with the bench unit. These rotations allow Buzelis to operate as the bigger fish in a smaller pond, giving him improved spacing to create for himself and teammates. This works fine as a stopgap effort, but it doesn’t fix the real problem. The Bulls are not trying to build a system around two players who work interchangeably. The point of a dynamic duo is for each player’s talents to combine into something greater than the sum of its parts.

Bottom line: If this experiment is going to work, Wilson and Buzelis must thrive together.

Sure, they play similar positions, but that is more of a nonissue than meets the eye in the modern NBA. Splitter has been open about his “positionless” outlook, dividing any rotation into three basic archetypes — a playmaking guard, a big man and three long wings who can range from the 2 to the 4. This means a pair of 3s can seamlessly coexist within Splitter’s ideal system, regardless of whether they technically play the same position.

Wilson and Buzelis also offer different strong suits within that archetype of the 3. Wilson is roughly 1 inch taller and 15 pounds heavier than Buzelis, a size differential that becomes obvious when he picks up larger defensive assignments and gets to his post-ups around the rim. Buzelis is significantly less comfortable playing with his back to the basket, but he thrives by maximizing his catch-and-shoot opportunities and cutting to create lanes for the offense off the ball. The most effective way to analyze Buzelis and Wilson is to focus on what makes them different, not similar — these are the areas of their game upon which they need to work the hardest.

Despite this ambivalence toward set positions, Buzelis has struggled visibly to adjust to Splitter’s system and the sheer gravity Wilson pulls within it. He gets stuck in the corners, hands up, waiting for a pass to come. He hesitates on his shot when he sees a closeout coming. He gets walled up when he drives to the rim. Buzelis has been confounded by his stagnation this season, remarking on how the gaps and channels he used to exploit consistently have all but vanished.

This only has been worsened by a teamwide weakness in 3-point shooting, which has allowed opposing defenses to sag off the arc and pack the paint to thwart any rim pressure. Buzelis also is shooting well below his career averages from deep, making only 31.4% of his 3-point attempts compared with 34.9% last year. But his most concerning statistical drop-off rests in the turnover column, where he is committing a career-high 2.8 per game.

Buzelis has often blamed his offensive struggles on opponents putting their best defender on him. That was certainly true last season — especially after the trade deadline, when a major roster upheaval left him as one of the few legitimate threats on the floor. But the opposite has been true for much of this season. Opponents are often sticking their worst defender — Jalen Brunson, Trae Young — on Buzelis.

When facing these weaker opponents, Buzelis has failed to take advantage. Splitter wants Buzelis to force those lesser defenders into tougher positions. Buzelis wants to get more guidance from Splitter’s system on how to do so. The impasse has left plenty of scoring opportunities on the table for the Bulls, who desperately need to take advantage of mismatches if they’re going to break out of their losing slump.

This compare-and-contrast sets up a framing that ultimately isn’t fair to Buzelis, 22, or Wilson, 20. The Bulls are not trying to play the two against each other. That’s not the point. And just because it didn’t work for the first 10 games of the season doesn’t mean it won’t work forever. It’s unreasonable to expect two players this young to get everything right at the same time from the jump. The simultaneous success of two young stars is the type of rarity that typically signals the onset of success in a franchise. The Bulls are still awaiting that moment of coalescence.

Buzelis and Wilson want this to work. The pair clicked upon first meeting in Chicago for Wilson’s predraft workout. They have openly and consistently expressed a desire to build something long term together with the Bulls. Any frustration vented by either player in the opening weeks was aimed at the growing pile of losses this rebuilding team left in its wake, not at a teammate. This is not a matter of outplaying one another. Both players need to build an identity that can work in tandem for the long haul.

For Buzelis, the most important task of this period without Wilson is to rebuild his lost confidence. He needs to reignite his shot. He needs to build his presence on the court through his defense rather than allowing poor offensive possessions to seep into his body language and effort on the defensive end. He needs to make decisions more quickly, more aggressively, to force defenders to deal with his speed.

For the next four to six weeks, Buzelis will have the opportunity to get back to himself. And in December, he and Wilson can try again.

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