The Chicago Bulls’ first scheduled matchup against former starting point guard Lonzo Ball has been revealed.
The entire 2025-26 NBA season schedule has been announced across the league.
Chicago took to its own social media accounts to lay out its entire slate.
Fans were clamoring (well, fans in Chino Hills, California were clamoring, anyway) to discover when the Bulls would first face off against Ball for the first time since trading him to the Cleveland Cavaliers earlier this summer.
— Chicago Bulls (@chicagobulls) August 14, 2025
The Bulls’ first encounter with Ball will be a November 8 road game. Chicago will next play back-to-back clashes against the Cavaliers, on December 17 at the United Center and then again on December 19 at Rocket Mortgage Arena.
After missing the last two-and-a-half years of action recovering from three knee surgeries, the 6-foot-6 UCLA product finally returned to the hardwood last year. But Ball played sparingly, suiting up for just 35 games before he was shut down for good with a wrist injury.
He averaged 7.6 points on .366/.344/.815 shooting splits, 3.4 rebounds, 3.3 assists, 1.3 steals and 0.5 blocks in 22.2 minutes per. Ball, who inked a two-year, $20 million extension before the end of 2024-25, wrapped up his four-year Bulls run having played in just 70 of a possible 328 regular season bouts.
Ball began his Chicago stint full of hope. He and fellow ex-Los Angeles Lakers guard Alex Caruso helped anchor a surprisingly adept perimeter defensive scheme, designed to help alleviate the burden from All-Star wings Zach LaVine and DeMar DeRozan or center Nikola Vucevic.
The Bulls galloped to a stunning midseason No. 1 seed in the chippy Eastern Conference, but Ball’s midseason knee injury sent the team spiraling, and the club essentially never recuperated. Chicago fell to the sixth seed in the East and was walloped in the first round of the 2022 playoffs by the Milwaukee Bucks. The team has never made the playoffs since.
Ball was shipped off in exchange for Cleveland 10th man forward Isaac Okoro, a solid defender who has recently improved his long range shooting, and might instantly become the Bulls’ best perimeter protector.
MORE NEWS: NBA writer makes bold prediction for Bulls’ rising star Matas Buzelis
