Chicago Bulls

The Chicago Bulls are the franchise that turned basketball into a global religion. Before Michael Jordan, the NBA was a popular American sports league. After Jordan and the Bulls finished their work in the 1990s, it was a worldwide cultural phenomenon. Six championships in eight years - two separate three-peats, in 1991-93 and 1996-98 - with the same core of Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and coach Phil Jackson, represent the most dominant run by any team in the modern NBA. The 1995-96 Bulls went 72-10, a regular-season record that stood for twenty years, and they played with a combination of brilliance and menace that made them feel less like a basketball team and more like an inevitable force of nature.

Jordan, of course, was the engine of everything. His Airness was not just the greatest basketball player of his era but arguably the most famous athlete in human history, a figure whose influence extended from the court to the stock market. But the Bulls were more than Jordan. Pippen was one of the most versatile players ever to lace up sneakers, a defensive savant and facilitator who made everything work. Dennis Rodman was the rebounding anarchist who somehow fit perfectly into Jackson's triangle offense. And Jackson himself, the Zen Master, wove together a collection of massive egos into a system that produced basketball that was simultaneously beautiful and ruthless. The United Center, which the Bulls moved into in 1995, became the stage for some of the most iconic moments in sports history.

The post-Jordan years have been a long exercise in trying to escape an impossible shadow. Derrick Rose's MVP season in 2011 felt like the beginning of a new golden era, but his devastating knee injuries robbed the franchise and the city of what might have been. The Bulls have cycled through rebuilds and retooling phases, never quite recapturing the magic but never losing the institutional pride that comes with being the house that Michael built. The Bulls remain one of the most globally recognized sports brands on earth, and the United Center - where a statue of Jordan mid-flight greets visitors - is still a pilgrimage site for basketball fans from every corner of the world.