Chicago Bulls

• 1. Introduction

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  The Chicago Bulls were granted an NBA franchise on the 16th of January 1966, and within a single season they had already done something no expansion team had ever managed: qualified for the playoffs. That first year set the tone for a franchise that would, decades later, assemble one of the most dominant dynasties in professional sports history. How did a team born in a city with two failed NBA predecessors rise to win six championships in eight years? What brought it crashing back to earth just as quickly? And what does it mean for a franchise to carry that weight into every season that follows?

• 2. A Franchise Is Born

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  Dick Klein founded the Bulls as the third NBA team in Chicago's history, following the Stags and the Packers/Zephyrs. Klein was unusual among franchise owners: he had actually played professional basketball, suiting up for the Chicago American Gears. He chose the name Bulls partly through practical logic. He wanted something that evoked Chicago's meat-packing industry and the Union Stock Yards near Chicago Stadium, but he also had a theory about syllables. Klein reportedly dismissed names like Matadors and Toreadors, saying no team with three or more syllables in its nickname had ever achieved much success, the Montreal Canadiens being the lone exception. The decision came after a family conversation, when his son Mark said, 'Dad, that's a bunch of bull.'

  Johnny 'Red' Kerr, a Chicagoan and former NBA All-Star, coached that inaugural 1966-67 team. On the 15th of October 1966, the Bulls upset the St. Louis Hawks in their very first game. They finished 33-48, the best record any expansion team had posted in NBA history at the time. Guard Guy Rodgers led the entire league in assists. Forward Jerry Sloan made the All-Star team. Kerr himself won Coach of the Year. The franchise had announced itself.

  Success didn't immediately translate to attendance. One game in the 1967-68 season drew an official crowd of just 891. The team played some games in Kansas City during that stretch. Klein eventually brought in Pat Williams, who had built a reputation for promotions with the Philadelphia 76ers, and Williams introduced the team's first mascot, Benny the Bull, in 1969. Under Williams and head coach Dick Motta, the Bulls made four consecutive playoff appearances and won a franchise-record 57 games in 1972. They reached the conference finals twice, in 1973-74 and again in 1974-75, before Williams left for Philadelphia and the team fell into a prolonged decline.

• 3. The Jordan Arrival

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  Houston selected Hakeem Olajuwon with the first pick in the 1984 NBA draft. Portland took Sam Bowie with the second. The Bulls, picking third, chose shooting guard Michael Jordan. The team's new general manager Jerry Krause and owner Jerry Reinsdorf decided to build around him, and Jordan immediately justified that decision. In his rookie season he finished third in the league in scoring and fourth in steals, and earned the NBA Rookie of the Year award along with a selection to the All-NBA Second Team.

  In the 1985-86 season, a broken foot slowed Jordan to a limited role. He returned for the playoffs, and the Bulls faced the 67-15 Boston Celtics. Jordan scored 63 points in Game 2, a playoff single-game record that still stands. Larry Bird called him 'God disguised as Michael Jordan.' The next season, Jordan led the league in scoring at 37.1 points per game and became the first Bull named to the All-NBA First Team.

  The 1987 draft brought Scottie Pippen to Chicago. Krause selected Olden Polynice eighth and Horace Grant tenth, then traded Polynice to Seattle for the fifth pick, which was Pippen. Krause also swapped Charles Oakley to the New York Knicks for center Bill Cartwright ahead of the 1988-89 season, a move that would prove crucial. Phil Jackson replaced Doug Collins as head coach before the 1989-90 season, setting the stage for everything that followed. The Detroit Pistons eliminated the Bulls from the playoffs in three consecutive years, but each time Chicago pushed them further.

• 4. Six Rings

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  In the 1990-91 season, the Bulls won 61 games and swept the Pistons in the Eastern Conference Finals, a team that had beaten them four straight years in the playoffs. They then defeated the Magic Johnson-led Los Angeles Lakers in five games for their first championship. The second title came after a 67-win season; the Bulls swept Miami, beat the Knicks in seven, dispatched Cleveland in six, and defeated the Clyde Drexler-led Portland Trail Blazers in six games in the Finals. The third consecutive championship came when John Paxson hit a three-pointer with 3.9 seconds remaining in Game 6 in Phoenix, giving the Bulls a 99-98 win over the Charles Barkley-led Suns.

  Jordan shocked the basketball world on the 6th of October 1993 by announcing his retirement, three months after his father's murder. Scottie Pippen stepped forward and won the 1994 All-Star MVP. The Bulls won 55 games that season but lost to the Knicks in seven games in the second round. On the 18th of March 1995, Jordan announced he was coming out of retirement. He scored 55 points against the Knicks in only his fifth game back.

  The 1995-96 Bulls are still spoken of as one of the greatest teams ever assembled. They moved from 47 wins to 72-10, becoming the first NBA team to win 70 or more regular-season games. Jordan won his eighth scoring title. Dennis Rodman, acquired from San Antonio for the rebounding specialist's track record, won his fifth straight rebounding title. Krause was named Executive of the Year, Jackson Coach of the Year, Toni Kukoč the Sixth Man of the Year. Their road record that season was 33-8, and they started 41-3. The Bulls then won in 1996-97 with a 69-13 record and in 1997-98 with a final regular season mark of 62-20, the latter season ending when Jordan hit a pull-up jumper over Bryon Russell with 5.2 seconds left for an 87-86 win over Utah. Jordan retired for the second time on the 13th of January 1999. The Bulls are the only NBA franchise to win multiple championships without ever losing a Finals series.

• 5. The Long Rebuild

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  Jerry Krause cited an aging roster and chose to rebuild after 1998, trading Pippen for minimal returns and letting Rodman leave. He hired Tim Floyd as coach. The lockout-shortened 1998-99 season ended with a 13-37 record, and at one point the team scored a franchise-low 49 points in a game against Miami. Elton Brand was drafted with the lottery pick and earned co-Rookie of the Year honors, but injuries and roster churn left the team at 15-67 in 2000-01, a franchise and league worst. In 1979, the Bulls had lost a coin flip for the rights to select Magic Johnson; the pattern of narrowly missing transformative talent had become a defining story.

  Krause retired in 2003, and John Paxson became general manager. In the 2004 draft, Paxson acquired Ben Gordon, Luol Deng, and Chris Duhon and signed Andrés Nocioni, a gold medalist with Argentina. Despite starting with nine consecutive losses, that team finished 47-35 and made the playoffs for the first time since 1998. Ben Gordon won the NBA Sixth Man of the Year award.

  In the 2006 playoffs, the Bulls swept the defending champion Miami Heat, their first series victory since 1998. Their postseason ended with a 4-2 loss to the Detroit Pistons in the next round. Progress was real but inconsistent. With only a 1.7 percent chance of winning the draft lottery in 2008, the Bulls won it anyway, and on the 26th of June 2008 they selected Chicago native Derrick Rose from the University of Memphis with the first overall pick.

• 6. Derrick Rose and the Almost Era

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  In his 2009 playoff debut against the Boston Celtics, Derrick Rose scored 36 points and added 11 assists, tying Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's record for most points scored by a rookie in a playoff debut. The Bulls and Celtics played seven games with seven overtime periods between them before Boston advanced. Rose was building toward something remarkable.

  Tom Thibodeau joined as head coach in June 2010, signing a three-year contract. The Bulls also secured Carlos Boozer from Utah for five years at $80 million and signed Kyle Korver and Ömer Aşık. In 2010-11, Rose won the NBA MVP award, becoming the youngest player in history to do so. He was the first Bull since Jordan to win it. Chicago finished 62-20, the best record in the league, and reached the Eastern Conference Finals for the first time since 1998 before losing to the Heat in five games.

  In Game 1 of the first round of the 2012 playoffs against the Philadelphia 76ers, Rose tore his ACL. Joakim Noah also suffered a foot injury in Game 3. The Bulls, who had posted the NBA's best record of 50-16 despite Rose missing much of the regular season, were eliminated by an eighth-seeded team, one of the few number-one seeds ever to fall in that fashion. Rose missed the entire 2012-13 season, and when he returned he tore his medial meniscus just 10 games into the 2013-14 season. Joakim Noah won the Defensive Player of the Year award that year, and finished fourth in MVP voting, but the window was closing. On the 28th of May 2015, the Bulls fired Thibodeau. The following year, on the 22nd of June 2016, they traded Rose to the New York Knicks in a deal that brought back Robin Lopez, Jerian Grant, and José Calderón.

• 7. Identity Beyond the Court

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  The Bulls' pregame introductions became as famous as the team itself. Longtime announcer Tommy Edwards was the first in the NBA to use 'Sirius' by The Alan Parsons Project and 'On the Run' by Pink Floyd in game presentation. Ray Clay replaced Edwards in 1990 and continued those traditions through all six championship runs. The sequence followed a fixed pattern: lights dimmed for the visiting team, near-total darkness for the Bulls introduction, a spotlight on each player as he ran onto the court. When the team moved to the United Center in 1994, multiple spotlights, lasers, and fireworks were added, along with a 3D-animated 'Running of the Bulls' video that debuted on a Sony Jumbotron with a first-person view of the bulls running toward the arena.

  A separate, unofficial tradition dates to 1989. Then-backup center Brad Sellers suggested players wear black shoes as a show of unity. The team did, and the practice stuck. For the 1996 playoffs, the Bulls became the first team in NBA history to pair black shoes with black socks. When Jordan debuted his Air Jordan XI in the 1995 playoffs against the Magic, he wore the white colorway during road games in Orlando and was fined by the team for not following the policy.

  The Bulls also share an arena with the NHL's Chicago Blackhawks, which gave rise to a decades-long logistical tradition. Every fall, Feld Entertainment's Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus came to Chicago and took over what is now the United Center, forcing both the Bulls and Blackhawks onto an extended road trip that local sportscasters called the 'circus trip.' The arrangement lasted until the circus' 2016 run, when Blackhawks chairman Rocky Wirtz let the contract lapse. The circus itself was discontinued in 2017. Alan Parsons, whose track 'Sirius' became the soundtrack to one of basketball's most recognizable moments, originally wrote the song for his own band; he was also the sound engineer for 'On the Run' on Pink Floyd's album The Dark Side of the Moon.

• 8. Searching for a New Chapter

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  In June 2017, the Bulls traded Jimmy Butler to the Minnesota Timberwolves for Zach LaVine, Kris Dunn, and a pick used to select Lauri Markkanen. On the 17th of October 2017, Bobby Portis punched teammate Nikola Mirotić in the face during practice, causing a concussion and facial fractures. Portis was suspended eight games; Mirotić missed 23. The Bulls finished the 2017-18 season at 27-55.

  In the 2021 off-season, Artūras Karnišovas and general manager Marc Eversley reshaped the roster, bringing in DeMar DeRozan from San Antonio and trading for Lonzo Ball. The team climbed to the top seed in the Eastern Conference in January 2022. DeRozan hit back-to-back buzzer-beater three-pointers against the Indiana Pacers and Washington Wizards in a stretch that briefly made them a genuine contender. But Ball's knee injury disrupted the team's momentum, and they finished sixth in the East before losing to Milwaukee in five games in the first round of the playoffs. In 2022, LaVine signed a five-year extension worth $215.2 million, the largest contract in franchise history. The team missed the playoffs outright in 2024-25, losing in the Eastern Conference play-in to the Miami Heat for the third consecutive year.

  The 2025-26 season began with a 5-0 record, the best start since 1996-97. The team then went on an 11-game losing streak in February, a franchise record for losses in a single winless month. At the trade deadline the Bulls completed seven trades, moving on from Nikola Vucevic, Coby White, and most of the veteran core. In April 2026, Karnišovas and Eversley were both dismissed. Billy Donovan stepped down as head coach after the team finished 31-51. On the 4th of May 2026, the Bulls named Bryson Graham as their new executive vice-president of basketball operations.