Masters of the rebuild, defending champion Thunder beat Bulls

The Bulls are in the early stages of another rebuild. They’ve said goodbye to Nikola Vucevic, Coby White, Ayo Dosunmu and Kevin Huerter and hope building blocks Josh Giddey and Matas Buzelis — with help from future draft picks — will move them closer to a championship.

On Tuesday, the Bulls faced a team that executed one of the best rebuilds in recent memory, losing to the defending champion Thunder 116-108 before a crowd of 18,561 at the United Center.

Buzelis, who had 11 points and five rebounds, rolled his right ankle and didn’t play after leaving with 19.2 seconds left in the third quarter. Giddey also rolled an ankle late in the third but played in the fourth, finishing with 14 points, 10 assists and nine rebounds.

Coach Billy Donovan said both suffered sprains and are day-to-day.

‘‘[On Wednesday], we’ll have a much better feel on both of them,’’ Donovan said.

Buzelis, who has played in every game this season, said he thinks he’ll be ready for the game Thursday in Phoenix.

‘‘I want to play every game,’’ Buzelis said. ‘‘We’ll see how it feels and go from there.’’

The Thunder already have gone pretty far down the road the Bulls are hoping to travel. They planted a seed for their project in 2019 by acquiring future MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and a handful of first-round picks as part of a trade that sent Paul George to the Clippers. They subsequently drafted Chet Holmgren and Jalen Williams in 2022, assembling the core of a championship team that only needed time to mature and a few well-planned acquisitions to complete the cast.

Following that blueprint won’t be easy for the Bulls — or anybody else.

The Thunder were lucky Kawhi Leonard wanted the Clippers to acquire George. That stripped the Clippers of any leverage, something Thunder executive Sam Presti exploited beautifully. The Thunder were fortunate that Gilgeous-Alexander (who missed the game with an abdominal strain) grew from an 11th overall pick to one of the best players on the planet, though he was aided by the team’s development infrastructure.

‘‘Every situation’s different, so I don’t know if anything’s replicable,’’ Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. ‘‘Situations change based on a million different things, a million different factors. Our success is a lot of work and certainly a lot of work by our players. But we’ve had a lot of luck, and I’m very careful because of that to come up here and give any sort of advice or speak from a level of standing that I don’t think is appropriate.

‘‘Their situation is different than ours, just like everybody. You need good fortune in different ways, and we’ve had it.’’

Donovan echoed Daigneault’s words, praising the Thunders drafting and development.

‘‘It probably went a lot faster than they thought,’’ Donovan said.

That’s what the Bulls would like to experience. They don’t want to become a team such as the Jazz or Wizards, franchises that have been stuck in perpetual rebuilds.

‘‘We’re in a spot where we’re trying to build out,’’ Donovan said. ‘‘A lot of it comes down to [having] good fortune. You want to develop the players that are already inside your organization. You want guys to be able to continue to grow. You want the chemistry on your team to be really, really good. You want guys to have the kind of mentality and the competitive makeup that you want to have and who you want to be as a team.’’