CASTROL RISING STARS POSTGAME

February 13, 2026

Matas Buzelis

Team Vince

Press Conference

Team Vince 25, Team Melo 24

MATAS BUZELIS: It was fun. I'm tired now.

Q. The skip back to the left hand, that was beautiful.

MATAS BUZELIS: That's just instincts. I'm capable of doing stuff like that on the court. I believe in myself. I just try to create stuff while I'm out there.

Q. What did you think of the competition level? A lot gets made out of All-Star Weekend that guys aren't playing as hard as we'd like to see them play, but you guys were going pretty hard out there.

MATAS BUZELIS: We were. We definitely were. It was still a little tough because guys were still playing. They're still playing hard. It's props to everybody. We did a great job, I think.

Q. Was that something you guys talked about ahead of time?

MATAS BUZELIS: Yeah, we were trying to go win everything. We weren't trying to just lay back and cruise.

Q. What's it like to have Vince as a coach?

MATAS BUZELIS: It's amazing. Pay my homage to him. He's a legend in the NBA, legend around the world. To have somebody like that by your side giving you confidence, you can pretty much do anything on the court.

Q. What would you take back from this experience?

MATAS BUZELIS: Honestly just work on my body now, relax a little bit, clear my mind off basketball. Just enjoy the rest of these days.

Q. We're from Japan, and you have a new teammate from Japan. Can you tell me something we don't know about Chicago Yuki?

MATAS BUZELIS: He likes to joke around a lot, at least me and him are. I don't know about with everyone else. Me and him joke around a lot. That's my guy. He's great. Everybody loves him in Chicago. He shines.

Q. Watching it feels like you guys have a lot of fun together as a team as a whole. How would you sort of describe that feeling of playing with that group?

MATAS BUZELIS: You're saying with this group today?

Q. No, the Bulls.

MATAS BUZELIS: Obviously a lot of trades happened recently, but it is what it is. You've got to adjust and move forward as a group. We're starting to get into our groove a little bit. We're going to keep figuring stuff out as we move forward.