The Chicago Bulls ended their season with a losing record, finishing 10th in the Eastern Conference during the 2025 season. Unfortunately, this result has become fairly typical for the franchise over the last few years. They haven’t made it to the postseason at all since 2022—and even then, they were eliminated in the first round by Milwaukee.

Nevertheless, basketball teams are always in some state of transition. What happened in one year needn’t necessarily foreshadow what will happen in the next, even for teams that aren’t making significant changes to their roster.

If you’d like to bet on Illinois sports, you can find more information here: https://www.youbet.com/states/illinois/

Or, if you’d like a more in-depth analysis of the Chicago Bulls’ odds, keep reading.

Overview

To begin with, no serious analyst is expecting the Bulls to revert to their Jordan-era performance in the 2026 season.

The team does have a talented young roster, but what most people are watching for is their potential.

Obviously, they’ve been underperforming over the last several seasons. The question isn’t only how can they go from finishing 10th in the Eastern Conference to winning the championship. It’s how can a team that has lacked postseason potential for several years develop a rhythm that will carry them deep into the playoffs.

Here, at least, there is a clear answer. The Bulls’ primary assets—at least in the context of long-term potential—don’t necessarily lie with any specific player currently on the roster, but rather in their potential to acquire high-quality talent over the next few years.

Salary Cap

One of the best things going for the Chicago Bulls is that they have more money to spend than almost any other team in the NBA.

They are currently nearly $60 million below the first salary cap threshold—the point at which teams begin paying a luxury tax—and $70 million below the second tier, which places even stricter limitations on roster spending.

This gives the Bulls significant flexibility to potentially add one or two premier players who could make a meaningful impact on their 2025–26 season prospects.

Good Returning Players

It’s also important to keep in mind that the best of the Bulls from last season are currently expected to be healthy and available for the 2025–26 season.

This includes Coby White, Nikola Vučević, Matas Buzelis, and Zach Collins. Obviously, this group wasn’t able to push the team deep into the postseason this year, but they did produce a steady performance, at least making it into the play-in tournament.

With the added benefit of one or two potential high-profile acquisitions, they could be much better positioned going into next season.

Finding Chemistry

Teams in a transitional state are always looking for that impalpable quality that doesn’t quite show up on the stat sheet. Chemistry. Tempo. Rhythm. A team dynamic that appears seamlessly fluid.

These qualities are hard to achieve because they require an ingredient you can’t buy. Time. In some cases, a team can adjust pretty quickly to a rebuild and hit the ground running. In other situations, it takes a while.

What category will the Bulls fall into? Without even knowing what kind of major acquisitions they will have going into the next season, that is impossible to say.

Most probably, 2026 will serve as the soft middle leg of a three-year rebuild cycle. They could be good next year, but to reach their full potential, they’ll need to get some solid reps in.

Perspective is Important

Keep in mind that this year was never meant to be anything other than a teardown season. Now, even teams in a rebuilding cycle want to perform well, but you can take a look at the team’s behavior and get a pretty clear understanding of where their expectations were.

There were complicated mid-season trades that really shook up the lineup, along with shifts in leadership that took the Bulls in new—and hopefully exciting—directions.

Very rare is the team that manages to make a real run at the playoffs while in such a transitional state. For that matter, it would be unlikely for them to be championship contenders next year either. Unlikely, but not impossible.

The question this article asks is: Can the Chicago Bulls make a deep playoff run next year? The answer is yes. It’s not extremely likely, but if they can find their tempo early, with a couple of good new guys, this team does have a chance to improve on this year’s performance.

All of that said, fans should be even more optimistic about what the Bulls will look like two to three seasons down the line. It generally takes a few cycles to get a good rebuild going. For sustainable long-term success, patience is key. The Bulls will be great again. It’s just a matter of when.