The Chicago Bulls can take pride in the fact that only three teams in the NBA have more titles than them – the Boston Celtics, Los Angeles Lakers, and Golden State Warriors — but they should be ashamed of the fact that since Michael Jordan left them in 1998, they only have one Eastern Conference Finals appearance in 27 years since.
The Bulls may have employed arguably the greatest basketball player ever, but how they’ve managed themselves since then has been pretty questionable. For that, their ownership has been called out for how poorly they’ve run the team.
Bill Simmons Singles Out Bulls for Bleakest Situation in the East
The Ringer’s Bill Simmons explained why he sees the Bulls as the worst-managed team in the NBA since Jordan’s departure.
“I think this has been a criminally misused asset for really since Jordan left, when, instead of going for the seventh title, they said, ‘Oh no, we’re going to rebuild. We’re smarter than everybody.’ And from that moment on, all they did was cheap out,” Simmons said.
Simmons explained what has gone wrong for the Bulls since Jordan’s days and why fans’ faith in them is misplaced.
“Basically, they are in the third biggest city. They are just cashing in all this revenue that you get from being in Chicago. All these people. These generations of people that grew up on the Jordan’s Bulls or remember the great days, so they keep their tickets and just kind of wait for something good to happen. Nothing good is going to happen with these owners,” Simmons said.
He then explained what he believes is the solution to the Bulls’ problems.
“Nothing good is going to happen with these owners.”@BillSimmons thinks that the Bulls are the no. 1 team that future NBA owners should try to buy. pic.twitter.com/R8h6i7Dz6x
— The Ringer (@ringer) July 7, 2025
“And I just feel like if I was like a kajillionaire, that would be the team I would try to buy because if you can reignite that team and rebuild them and tap into the Jordan DNA and Pippen and bring those guys back and give Jordan a ceremonial position, really like ignite it, I think that would be a really special franchise and right now it’s not. I think it’s the worst situation in the East.”
In the time since Jordan left, the best era they’ve had is the Derrick Rose era, which led to one Eastern Conference Finals appearance in 2011 and a time that was sadly cut short because of injuries.
Since then, Chicago has had no discernible direction. They have tried to rectify it, and they have some decent players on the roster, but it’s clear that the Bulls don’t have a clear pathway to return to those days.
