With our Chicago Bulls mere hours away from tipping off their 2026-27 season with a likely road loss to the Kawhi Leonard/Scottie Barnes Toronto Raptors, my thoughts have turned to some other memorable Bulls season openers from this century.
The 1990s dynasty-era Bulls obviously had far, far more consequential games than any Chicago squad has ever enjoyed since. So why not celebrate some of the franchise’s less heralded openers?
One Halloween night opener decades ago proved particularly spooky… for the other team.
In 2006, coming off a second straight first-round playoff exit, John Paxson’s rising Chicago Bulls had made some critical moves to improve. The club stole four-time Defensive Player of the Year center Ben Wallace from the Detroit Pistons in free agency on a massive $60 million contract, signed P.J. Brown, and selected (ugh) power forward Tyrus Thomas in the lottery and swingman Thabo Sefolosha in the middle of the first round.
With those new pieces surrounding an intriguing young core of point guard Kirk Hinrich, shooting guard Ben Gordon, and swingman Luol Deng, the Scott Skiles-coached squad was a team the league at large actually cared about showcasing.
Detroit Pistons forward Ben Wallace.The Very-Ready-For Primetime Bulls
So they got a primetime slot, kicking off TNT’s opening night slate against the team that booted them from the postseason the previous spring in six games: coach/president Pat Riley’s mighty Miami Heat, fresh off the lone championship run their Dwyane Wade/Shaquille O’Neal core would achieve.
Miami mostly retained its same title roster year-over-year, but key cogs like O’Neal, Gary Payton, Alonzo Mourning, Jason Williams, and Antoine Walker were all rapidly aging. Wade sat out 31 contests for Miami (which he would also do in 2007-08), while O’Neal missed 42 bouts.
Highlights from this game are hard to come by online, but we found a very Wade-centric mash-up commemorating the bout.
No one quite anticipated that the Heat would crumble so rapidly while bringing back the same core.
Chicago absolutely pasted Miami on the night the team received its championship rings in front of the then-American Airlines Arena faithful. Despite a 25-point night from Chicago’s own Dwyane Wade on 10-of-15 field goal shooting and 3-of-6 free throw shooting, the Bulls decimated the champs by a whopping 42 points, 108-66!
It was a slaughter. A magical, beautiful slaughter.
Captain Kirk, selected two picks after Wade in that iconic 2003 NBA Draft, scored a game-high 26 points on 10-of-18 shooting from the floor (3-of-5 from distance) and 3-of-4 shooting from the foul line, while chipping in four boards, three assists, and two steals. He would earn his lone All-Defensive Team nod this year as a switchy combo guard capable of putting the clamps on any cover.
Forecasting the postseason, bench forward Andres Nocioni and Wallace lit up the bigger-but-aging Heat on the boards. They each pulled down 11 rebounds, while scoring a combined 14 points on 6-of-13 field goal shooting and 1-of-1 free throw shooting.
Reserve point guard Chris Duhon — who had been yet another diamond-in-the-rough rookie find for Paxson during a legendary 2004 NBA Draft run — scored a bench-most 20 points on 7-of-8 field goal shooting (3-of-3 from distance), including 11 in the first half alone. A 37-14 second quarter Bulls advantage, spurred by a prolific Hinrich (who notched 10 points on 4-of-5 shooting and +16 plus-minus in the game) and Duhon, plus a scrambling Skiles defense, helped Chicago pull away to a stunning 59-31 advantage at half.
The champs were literally booed by their home crowd on ring night!
“The defense was carrying us, defense kept us in the game,” Wallace said postgame, per CNN. “A lot of emotion and energy is taken up in the ring ceremony and we wanted to come out and catch them off guard.”
Riley, who had declined to promise a repeat title like he infamously had after his Los Angeles Lakers claimed their 1987 championship in the wake of Miami’s 2006 run, pulled no punches.
“Welcome back to reality,” Riley informed the gathered media scrum. “There isn’t really much to say …. there has been a gauge put on how much work we have to do.”
It would prove an ominous harbinger of things to come.
The following spring, Miami became the first reigning champ to get swept out of the first round of the playoffs during its title defense season by our 48-win Bulls.
While the Heat’s spotty defense in 2006 made Andres Nocioni look like prime Tracy McGrady, the subsequent 2007 series was more of a coming-out party for Luol Deng.
The eventual two-time All-Star had prioritized defense over offense the previous season. Things changed when he had the rock in his hands in ’07. Deng averaged a Bulls-most 26.3 points on 57.9 percent field goal shooting and 85 percent free throw shooting, 9.0 rebounds, 3.0 dimes, 1.8 steals, and 0.8 blocks. Gordon enjoyed a superlative series, too, at least on offense: the 2005 Sixth Man of the Year averaged 25.5 points on a .443/.400/.857 slash line, along with 4.3 rebounds, 5.5 assists, and 1.3 swipes.
Nocioni and Hinrich were Chicago’s other two double-digit scorers during the sweep. Wallace grabbed 9.8 rebounds, scored 9.3 points, passed for 1.8 assists, blocked 1.5 shots, and snagged 1.5 steals.
Chicago won by an average of 11 points, including a pair of double-digit blowouts in Games 2 and 4.
As a caveat, it’s worth acknowledging that Wade was not fully healthy in that playoff series. Then again, so much early wear and tear on his surgically enhanced meniscus during his early pro years was always going to lead to injury woes. During the 2007 offseason, the eventual 12-time All-Star underwent separate surgeries on his shoulder and left knee.
Neither the Bulls nor the Heat even made the playoffs in 2007-08. Midway through the next season, Riley replaced himself as a coach with Erik Spoelstra and flipped O’Neal to the Phoenix Suns. Wallace, too, was traded away midseason, amid weird infighting with Joakim Noah.
Chicago and Miami would earn the Nos. 1 and 2 picks in the subsequent 2008 NBA Draft — although neither squad selected the guys who wound up being the two best players in that draft, future Hall of Famers Russell Westbrook and Kevin Love. Derrick Rose did enjoy a pretty encouraging start to his career, though!
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