Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen won’t be happy about what just happened to the banners that they worked so hard to raise.
Julia Poe of the Chicago Tribune reported on Friday that the Bulls’ six NBA championship banners will not be displayed for the remainder of the 2024-25 season. The reason is because the banners got damaged during a recent concert held at United Center.
Poe writes that arena staff discovered “minor damage” to the banners after a concert last Saturday featuring metal bands Three Days Grace, Sevendust, and The Disturbed. The concert reportedly had pyrotechnics that were located directly underneath the banners.
As a result of the concert pyrotechnics, the fabric of all six banners showed “significant heat damage” that warped their bottom halves, Poe writes. The banners will now require a repair timeline beyond the end of the NBA regular season in April.
Chicago has won six total NBA championships, all coming in the 1990s. They had a threepeat from 1991-93 followed by another threepeat from 1996-98. Jordan, Pippen, and head coach Phil Jackson were the primary mainstays for all six of those championships.
But the last few years have not been very kind to the Bulls’ glory days of the ’90s. In addition to Chicago’s championship banners now getting damaged, Jordan and Pippen have been openly feuding for a while now. Bulls fans also sparked backlash last year for booing late former Chicago GM Jerry Krause during a Ring of Honor ceremony (while his widow Thelma was in attendance).
