The 1995-96 Bulls' 72-10 Season, Explained

For twenty years, the answer to “what’s the best NBA season ever?” was one team: the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls. They set a record that felt untouchable, won it all, and still lost ten games — which is exactly why they belong in any honest conversation about 82-0.

The record that owned two decades

Chicago finished 72-10, a .878 winning percentage, and no team came within shouting distance of it until the 2015-16 Warriors edged it by a single game at 73-9. In between, contenders came and went; the number stood. Only two teams in NBA history have ever won more than 70 games, and this was the first.

What made it stick wasn’t just the win total. The Bulls paired it with a championship, closing a 15-3 postseason run against the Seattle SuperSonics. Best record and the trophy is a combination even the team that eventually broke their regular-season mark couldn’t match.

An all-time complete roster

This was Michael Jordan’s first full season back from his baseball detour, and he returned to win both MVP and the scoring title. Around him, Scottie Pippen gave the team a second star two-way wing, Dennis Rodman turned rebounding into a controllable weapon, and Toni Kukoc won Sixth Man of the Year off a bench that didn’t sink the lineup when starters sat. Under Phil Jackson, the Bulls had elite offense, elite defense, and real depth — a roster with no exploitable hole, the same profile our draft strategy guide treats as the actual lever for winning simulated seasons.

Their point differential landed near +12 points per game, which is where the truly historic teams cluster. If you want the full picture on why margin-of-victory matters more than raw record, see net rating and how the greatest teams compare.

Ten losses, from a team with no weakness

And that team — no weak link, a title in hand, a differential in the all-time top tier — lost ten games.

That’s the number that keeps the 72-10 Bulls relevant to the 82-0 question. You cannot point to a flaw. There wasn’t a soft rotation spot to exploit or a missing skill to expose. They simply played 82 games, and 82 games is long enough that even a flawless-on-paper team drops ten. The odds of a perfect season explain the mechanism: win probability compounds, and across dozens of games even a heavy favorite accumulates losses it was never individually “supposed” to take.

Bulls or Warriors? The wrong question, sort of

The 72-10 versus 73-9 debate is real and fun — the Warriors have the extra win, the Bulls often have the differential-and-championship edge. But the more instructive comparison isn’t which team was better. It’s that both of the two best regular seasons in league history landed within a game of each other in losses: ten and nine. Two completely different rosters, two different eras, and both stopped at almost exactly the same distance from perfect.

That convergence is the point. It’s not that these teams weren’t good enough. It’s that 82-0 sits past a wall that even the two best seasons ever hit in nearly the same spot. For how they stack up alongside the 33-game-streak Lakers, see every NBA team that almost went undefeated.

Draft your own 72-win team

The 1995-96 Bulls set the bar for a complete roster — and still finished ten losses shy of perfect. 82-0 lets you build a balanced five and find out how close your season can get. Free, no account required.