Chicago Bulls
NBA Central 2026-27: A Bulls Fan’s Guide to the Division
The Central looks nothing like it did a year ago. Detroit won 60 games and the East’s top seed. Cleveland went to the conference finals. Milwaukee traded the player who defined the franchise for a decade. Indiana lost a superstar to an Achilles tear and is getting him back.
And Chicago is starting over underneath all of it.
Here’s what the Bulls are walking into.
Detroit Pistons
2025-26: 60 wins, first in the East, won the Central by eight games.
The rebuild is over, and it ended faster than anyone expected. Detroit’s young core — Cade Cunningham, Jalen Duren, Ausar Thompson, Jaden Ivey, Ron Holland — went from a punchline to the best record in the conference in roughly two seasons.
The offseason was deliberately quiet. Detroit chose to rely mostly on internal improvement, with the biggest move swapping in John Collins for Tobias Harris, who signed with San Antonio. That’s a bet that a group this young keeps getting better on its own, which is usually a reasonable bet and occasionally a complacent one.
ESPN’s summer forecast has the Pistons at 53-29, tied with the champion Knicks atop the East — a step back from 60 wins but still the division favorite in most rooms.
The Bulls’ angle: The model. Detroit was 44-38 two years ago and picking in the lottery not long before that. It’s the closest available proof that the thing Chicago is attempting can work quickly.
Cleveland Cavaliers
2025-26: A conference finals run.
The Cavaliers spent the offseason managing constraints rather than upgrading — the cost of a roster built around Donovan Mitchell, Evan Mobley and James Harden. The notable addition was two-way wing Peyton Watson.
The number that matters: Cleveland went 19-7 with Harden in the lineup, a 60-win pace. A full season of the Mitchell-Harden backcourt is the case for the Cavaliers taking the division outright, and several forecasts have them doing exactly that.
The Bulls’ angle: Four games against the East’s most established offensive team, and the one most likely to expose a young defense.
Milwaukee Bucks
2025-26: 32-50.
Giannis Antetokounmpo is gone. Milwaukee traded him to Miami, ending one of the most successful player-team partnerships in the league, and received Tyler Herro, Kasparas Jakucionis, Jaime Jaquez Jr. and Kel’el Ware among others, plus Caris LeVert from Detroit.
Herro becomes the clear first option for the first time in his career. The rest is young and unproven. This is a rebuild that Milwaukee didn’t choose so much as arrive at.
The Bulls’ angle: The most winnable divisional matchup, and the most direct comparison. Two teams tearing down at the same time, one starting from 32-50 with a returning scorer, one from 31-51 with a rookie. Whoever looks better in April has a real argument about which approach worked.
Indiana Pacers
2025-26: The wild card, and still is.
Tyrese Haliburton missed the entire season recovering from the Achilles injury he suffered in the 2025 Finals. He’s back, but Indiana is expected to manage his workload carefully, especially early — which means a slow start is a real possibility for a team whose ceiling depends entirely on him being himself again.
Nobody knows what this team is until roughly January.
The Bulls’ angle: The schedule quirk worth noting — Chicago’s Jan. 4 game at Indiana is one of only three nationally televised Bulls games all season.
Chicago Bulls
2025-26: 31-51, after a deadline teardown that sent out Nikola Vucevic, Coby White, Ayo Dosunmu and Kevin Huerter for nine second-round picks.
New head coach Tiago Splitter. New basketball operations lead in Bryson Graham. Caleb Wilson at No. 4 after the lottery moved Chicago up from ninth. Norman Powell signed to keep the floor respectable. Matas Buzelis entering year three as the building block.
The realistic case: Wilson is as good as Summer League suggested, Buzelis takes another step, and Chicago lands in the 4-through-10 lottery range that the league’s revised structure now rewards. The realistic worry: six of the first eight games are on the road, the opening twelve include the Knicks, 76ers and Celtics twice each, and a young team can lose its season in October before it learns anything.
The bottom line
Two genuine contenders at the top, one team in freefall, one enormous unknown, and the Bulls at the bottom trying to become the thing Detroit already became.
The division is winnable for exactly two teams, and Chicago plays sixteen games against the four of them. Those games are where you’ll find out whether this rebuild has a floor.
Chicago Sports Wire covers the Bulls and the Central Division all season. See the Bulls schedule for tip-off times and broadcast info.