Chicago Bulls fan anticipation is palpable. Excitement dials are turned up to 11. There’s really not a wide variety of words to pull from to describe the euphoria surrounding Bulls fans' feelings about the team’s upcoming 2026-27 NBA season.
Naturally, excitement of this magnitude may induce a feeling of arrival, but the reality is the Bulls are embarking on a mysterious journey that has no guaranteed destination.
On Saturday, the Bulls released what most fans would refer to as a “hype video” that meticulously builds a cinematic bridge from the tumultuous end of the Bulls' 2025-26 NBA season, the front office transition from Arturas Karnisovas to Bryson Graham, the watershed moment of the 2026 NBA Draft Lottery, and the 2026 NBA Draft itself, the Bulls’ 2026 summer league experience, all the way to the approaching eve of the Bulls' first official practice of the 2026-27 NBA season.
Inside the start of a new era of Chicago Bulls basketball: pic.twitter.com/k90m3J26xm
— Chicago Bulls (@chicagobulls) September 26, 2026
The video hits all the right notes
After watching the Bulls video, fans should be appropriately hyped up about the upcoming Bulls season. It is a high-quality video. Great shots, solid story arcs connect from one phase of the offseason to another. Injecting Derrick Rose for on-brand Bulls nostalgia is done with taste.
Reality: the Bulls' new era is an abstract mystery
Now here’s the honest take on the video and everything that will occur after watching the video. Your Chicago Bulls have not arrived. They may be starting a journey today, but the unvarnished truth is that this Bulls journey has no defined arrival point yet.
There is a small circle of Chicago Bulls decision-makers who will exercise outsized influence on what destination the franchise progresses towards for however long the new front office regime presides over the Bulls’ basketball operations.
The Bulls' circle of decision-makers ultimately is controlled by Michael Reinsdorf, and the accountability fans should place on him is this: connect your words to CONSISTENT ownership actions.
Apologizing to fans for hiring Arturas Karnisovas was a starting point, and that also means that Mr. Reinsdorf must operate differently as the principal day-to-day ownership face of the Bulls.
Reinsdorf articulated in the Bulls’ video that people are too often afraid to tell the truth, and he also needs to be an NBA owner who is willing to ACT on the truth.
The Chicago Bulls will arrive at winning basketball if Michael Reinsdorf is willing to promptly act when the Bulls' on-court product tells him when players need to be traded, when draft picks fail, when a new head coaching voice is needed in the locker room, and, if necessary, when his basketball operations head isn’t fit for the job anymore.
These should all be the lessons that Michael Reinsdorf is searing into his NBA owner behavior because he missed the mark on taking timely actions on all these points for six seasons while Arturas Karnisovas presided over his franchise.
A hype video is absolutely something that Chicago Bulls fans deserve to wrap up the 2026 NBA offseason. What Bulls fans deserve even more is an NBA owner who will commit to being accountable and fully present in Bulls basketball operations as an enabler of winning instead of an enabler of mediocrity.
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