Growing up is realizing that sports moments that matter to fans don’t always encompass a championship. Sometimes it’s a painful loss, a truly unique game experience, or, in the case of the Chicago Bulls, the franchise history between the 2020-21 and 2025-26 seasons, with emphasis on an explicitly finite period of games in the 2021-22 NBA season.
35 games. 35 games. 35 games. That’s all we got out of a period of time that was supposed to be a Bulls franchise renaissance: 35 games of the Chicago Bulls being the best basketball team in the entire world! Technically, it was 40 games, but here’s why 35 games is the number - a number that merits a banner-raising ceremony in the United Center.
What we as Bulls fans didn’t know at the time is that guard Lonzo Ball was the entire lynchpin of former Bulls executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas’ vision for his era of Bulls basketball.
Ball appeared in 35 of the Bulls' first 40 games, and those games delivered upstart basketball that shocked the world. By Jan 14, 2022, the Chicago Bulls were the number one team in the NBA Eastern Conference with a 27-13 win-loss record.
Ball missed five Bulls games between Dec 26, 2021, and Jan 1, 2022, and would return to game action for six more games in Jan 2022.
Again, on Jan 14, 2022, the Bulls were perched atop the East, and at the same time, we would later learn that the Bulls’ Jan 14, 2022, 138-96 loss to the Golden State Warriors would be Lonzo Ball’s last game played for the 2021-22 season and the next two seasons thereafter, 2022-23 and 2023-24 NBA seasons.
The Bulls ultimately were unceremoniously knocked off their perch and descended into unmitigated mediocrity that culminated in Karnisovas’ firing in April 2026. You might ask yourself, does this all really require a banner in the United Center? Yes. Yes, it does, and the fans deserve it.
Bulls fan memories of 35 games are strong
In a simple X (fka Twitter) repost of a highlight montage by the illustrious NBA media personality Rob Perez, aka WorldWideWob, chronicling the Chicago Bulls' 114-108 road victory over the Denver Nuggets on Nov 19, 2021, a modest community gathering emerged on the timeline.
What a time to be alive. https://t.co/R85uIurSGm
— Morris Bankston (@mobanks10) September 19, 2026
500-plus likes and a few touching comments revealed how much emotional connection we Bulls fans have to 35 games of the 2021-22 Bulls season.
35 is worthy of its place in the UC rafters because those games will mean something to a whole generation of fans who weren’t alive or aware of six NBA championships in the 1990s or Derrick Rose’s MVP season.
Hopefully, Caleb Wilson is about to change the future of the Bulls franchise, but in the interim, 35 games is the last great moment in Bulls franchise history.
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