CHICAGO — The Chicago Bulls say they’re committed to both winning and losing the right way. But on the eve of the 2026-27 NBA season, it’s difficult to parse out how that will manifest itself.
That’s the thing about a rebuild. Wins and losses start to assume the same value, the same role in a team’s progress. So coach Tiago Splitter and executive vice president of basketball operations Bryson Graham are committed to being OK with losing. (Or, if not OK with it, at least to stomach it long enough to develop young players and scoop up a couple of decent draft picks.)
That’s fine for an executive. It’s harder to understand as a fan, especially the weary, long-traveled masses who traverse the Chicago cold to the United Center or those who navigate cable and streaming packages to watch games from home.
Most modern NBA fans understand the importance of a rebuild. But they also want to see their team win. And for the Bulls this season, it’s hard to tell how that commitment to development will translate to their record.
It’s never ideal to look to betting sources for guidance, and that’s especially true this season as the league adjusts to new anti-tanking rules. BetMGM set the over/under for Bulls wins at 29 1/2 — a notably optimistic outlook for the Bulls, who will be battling with other Eastern Conference also-rans to stay out of the new relegation zone.
Although losing is still an acceptable byproduct of a rebuild, the anti-tanking rules no longer incentivize abysmal records. The bottom three teams in each conference will receive worse draft-lottery odds — equal to those of the ninth- and 10th-seeded teams in the play-in tournament.
The change is intended to improve the quality of competition from lesser teams with lower hopes of making the play-in or playoffs. It should lead to fewer blowouts and more compression in the standings as those teams refuse to roll over and risk relegation.
This complicates competition for the Bulls, who tallied either 39 or 40 wins in each of the three consecutive seasons — 2022-23 through 2024-25 — that they made (and then quickly lost in) the play-in tournament.
Those three play-in seasons, however, were a perfect encapsulation of the type of competition the NBA is trying to root out with the new rules. The Bulls were fixated on competitiveness to get into the play-in tournament, but most of their lower-tier competitors in the East focused on tanking. Thus the Bulls padded their way to 39- and 40-win seasons by beating up lottery-bound teams that were happy to absorb the drubbings in exchange for better draft odds.
Last season the Bulls win total dropped to 31, mostly because of the purposeful nose dive taken after half the roster was traded at the February deadline.
This season’s roster is more purposefully constructed than that post-deadline team, and the additions of veterans such as Norman Powell and Nic Claxton should provide a buoying effect. But the road to a similar win total is much more difficult.
The Brooklyn Nets and Milwaukee Bucks figure to serve as the East’s punching bags, but the Bulls won’t get any guaranteed wins against teams like the Charlotte Hornets, Washington Wizards, Atlanta Hawks or Orlando Magic.
The season opens with a demanding three-week gauntlet that includes two games apiece against the Boston Celtics, New York Knicks and Philadelphia 76ers, in addition to games against the San Antonio Spurs and Toronto Raptors. Claxton’s ongoing absence heightens the difficulty of the opening stretch. The Bulls will have to rack up wins on the margins this season — a harder feat when the margins have been so greatly diminished.
This might seem pessimistic. But in reality, it’s a sign of positive growth for a Bulls team that could be on the rise in a short time.
This season should produce an intriguing “if, then” situation for the Bulls. A season with 30-plus wins would happen only if they see a major leap in growth from either Caleb Wilson or Matas Buzelis. While players such as Powell and Claxton should provide consistency, those two young players are the key variables by which the Bulls can explode upward. An ahead-of-schedule ascent from either would be welcomed by the Bulls, which would reset the timeline of the rebuild.
It’s likelier that Buzelis and Wilson will take the expected, appropriate steps forward (and, at times, backward) in their progression this season. Those steps, if made, would be enough to build for the future.
After so many seasons of play-in tournament tunnel vision, it’s difficult to reframe a team’s focus to this new reality of mid-tier competition. Yet that paradigm shift is essential if the Bulls ever want to break out of the middle of the East and regain their footing as a true conference contender.
Change is for the better in Chicago. But first it will be hard — and hard-fought.
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