Only on occasion do the Chicago Bulls live up to their namesake. In the 2020s, they have rarely looked like a group of animals stampeding; their style has been more a veteran plodding, landing them near the middle of the league in pace, at best. But this season, though the season-long results haven’t been any better, the twenties have gotten to roaring in Chicago. The Bulls are third overall in possessions per game, and charge even more relentlessly since a trade deadline makeover.

Josh Giddey and Coby White lead the blitzkrieg, but Tre Jones—acquired in part of the deal that sent Zach LaVine to Sacramento—has also been an effective lightning squad captain. The roster is replete with young, bouncy players who benefit greatly from the shift in style; Dalen Terry, Julian Phillips, Patrick Williams, and eye-popping rookie Matas Buzelis like to get those legs moving, exhausting teams with their considerable strides and burst at the rim. The constant pressing has produced much better shooting from beyond the arc, too—the Bulls are third in threes made per game.

Until the LaVine trade, the Bulls looked very much like a team between identities. DeMar DeRozan and Alex Caruso, the twin clutch Gods who dragged the team to near .500 for the past two seasons, were gone—but with their highest-paid player still in tow, and the team often looking like a live showcase for him to get himself traded, Chicago was hardly knee-deep into a new era. That has changed, recently, as fans across the sport noticed this past weekend, when the team sprinted into the Staples Center and ran the Los Angeles Lakers out of the game before it became the kind of battle they prefer to fight.

Giddey got the headlines, for coming as close as anyone can to achieving a precious Quadruple Double with 15 points, 17 assists, 10 rebounds, and eight steals. In his fourth season, the 22-year-old has gotten more physical, turning his size into a fearful thing as he plays increasingly with that kind of steam that comes out of an ox’s nostrils. You can get out of his way when he does this, as players are often opting to do, or you can try to play rugby with the guy; but he’s the one from Australia. He gets rid of the ball quickly, capitalizing on the edges his momentum creates as soon as they emerge, igniting deep-shooting and rim-running bonanzas. Defensively, there is still room to doubt: Giddey, like many tall NBA men, doesn’t move well laterally, or jump especially well. But he’s turned his hands into an asset, with a heightened steal rate, and gotten more aggressive on the boards over the course of his first Bulls season.

Giddey was a +22 in the 146-115 L.A. beatdown, but White was a +28. Attacking more freely in the post-LaVine regime, he is a bright-burning athlete with incredible skill and feel. He scored 36 in the game, and has averaged 29 points per game across March, shooting 50 percent from the field despite consistently high shot difficulty. Bulls fans have become accustomed to seeing him do ridiculous things going to the basket: putting it in while falling sideways, muscling out and-ones, stopping leg-hurtingly short for a graceful floater, using the glass in clever ways. He seemed to take particular joy in utilizing this arsenal against DeRozan and LaVine, his dual bucketsmith mentors, two nights before the Lakers showcase, scoring 35 in another Bulls road win.

Exactly how good can a team led by Giddey and White get? Probably not dramatically better than where it is now, in the Eastern Conference play-in range for the third season in a row. But if anyone can improve enough to move that needle further, it’s Buzelis. The third dynamo in the Lakers rout, the 20-year-old local prospect scored a career-high 31 points. The arc of his Bulls' career has perhaps changed the most, since LaVine’s exit; his playing time has seen a major uptick, and the Bulls have held their position largely because of how reliable a rookie he’s been.

There’s little weakness in the long-term Buzelis scouting report. He has yet to shoot well from deep reliably, but the fundamentals of his shot are strong; he’s a bit weak, but he’s young and still fighting his wire-bound metabolism, and the strength your legs use to propel you is certainly no issue, as Buzelis is already one of the sport’s most unmissable finishers at the rim. His dunk after crossing over Luka Doncic led many a social media feed over the weekend, but he’s been making violent art at the basket all season. He’s got great creativity in space as a scorer, too, and tremendous defensive instincts. It hasn’t been a bountiful half-decade for Bulls fans, but Buzelis falling to them at no. 11 in last year’s draft is at least one blessing worth counting.

How the rest of the season plays out may influence the way the Bulls continue building this young squad over the summer, though maybe its fate is already set. The best case scenario, in either event, is that Chicago can fight its way all the way to the seventh playoff seed in the East, and put a mild first-round scare into the defending champion Boston Celtics. Anything more than that is unwarranted imagineering, for now. There is still no route to where the Celtics or the Lakers are—or where the Bulls used to be—next year or beyond, for this fanbase. There is consolation in their latest transformation, though. It has made them gallop more, put something back into the step of their followers.