When the expansion Raptors beat one of the best NBA teams of all time

On March 24, 1996, the first-year Toronto Raptors bested Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls at the Skydome.

An image of Toronto Raptors centre Oliver Miller celebrating a victory in Toronto in March 1996 — Toronto Raptors centre Oliver Miller, right, celebrates with teammate Doug Christie as he looks over at Chicago Bulls guard Michael Jordan. (CP PHOTO/Frank Gunn)

Being an expansion team in pro sports is hard. There’s the fun and early excitement around your city having a sports team, but once that fades there’s the whole “figuring things out on the fly” and — you know — the “losing.”

It wasn’t all that long ago that the Toronto Raptors were an expansion team themselves, plying their wares at what was then known as Skydome. Their first season? It went about as well as you’d expect. The team suffered through two seven-game losing streaks on the way to a 21-61 campaign.

But for a moment in the middle of it all, none of that last paragraph mattered — for a single game, they were gods.

On March 24, the Raptors faced off against Michael Jordan and the 1995–96 Chicago Bulls, who were on their way to a then-record 72–10 season. And the Raptors won.

Read on for the story of a very unlikely, strangely memorable victory.

An image of Michael Jordan taking the ball to the hoop in an NBA game in 1996 — Jordan soars to the hoop in Toronto on March 24, 1996. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn)

Where were the teams at at the start of the game?

Heading into the final week of March of the 1995–96 season, the Raptors were just 17-49 — on their way to a 21-61 campaign, and last place in the Eastern Conference’s Central Division.

The bright spot was rookie Damon Stoudamire, who’d been selected seventh overall in the previous June’s draft. Well on his way to the 1995–96 Rookie of the Year award, Stoudamire was averaging 18.6 points and 9.2 assists for the expansion squad.

The Bulls, meanwhile, were 60-7. (For context, no team in the 2022–23 NBA season is likely to hit 60 wins in the full 82 games.)

After the season, Jordan won MVP, both he and teammate Scottie Pippen made first-team All-NBA, and Bulls forward Toni Kukoc won Sixth Man of the Year. Newcomer to the team Dennis Rodman also led the league with a whopping 14.9 rebounds per game.

That said, Rodman was in the midst of a two-week absence from the team at the time of the Raptors game, and didn’t play.

Damon Stoudamire (31pts/11asts/6threes) vs. Bulls (1996)

How did the lowly Raptors beat the mighty Bulls?

A look back at the box score shows the Raptors winning with a very modern game plan. Like today’s Raptors, they crashed the offensive glass (20 offensive boards) and won the turnover battle (just 10 turnovers to the Bulls’ 12).

But unlike today’s Raptors, they made their three pointers — a sizzling 11 of 17 on the evening. Stoudamire himself hit six of eight attempts on the night, en route to a team-high 30 points.

In short: The Raps won by getting more shots, and making more threes.

Jordan didn’t make it easy on them, though. He played just shy of 40 minutes, hitting 14 of 22 shots and went eight for eight from the line for 36 points. He also added nine board, two assists, and two blocks.

Thanks in large part to that characteristically great performance, the game came down to a final Bulls possession. With the Raptors leading 109–108, Chicago guard Steve Kerr took a long three with a few seconds remaining on the clock, but it bounced hard off the rim.

Jordan got the rebound and banked one in from a crazy angle along the baseline, but the shot left his hand just a touch too late.

What was the reaction after the game?

While it was just one win in an otherwise typically difficult expansion season, the game felt like a coming-out party — and everyone involved seemed to recognize that. Here’s how the TV broadcast play-by-play announcer called it in the immediate aftermath:

“But no! After the buzzer! And the Toronto Raptors have pulled it out. They’ve done it! The Toronto Raptors have done it. They have beaten Michael. They have beaten the Bulls.”

The fans in attendance reacted in kind, screaming their heads off for their team’s gutty performance.

“The roar of the crowd was unbelievable,” Raptors head coach Brendan Malone said after the game. “It was a euphoric experience.”

To top it all off, the Raptors even got the front page of the Toronto Star sports section the following day. The headline: “Raptors win it — no Bull”.

Bonus fun facts

Thanks to the cavernous Skydome, attendance that night was 36,131. Capacity of the Raptors’ current digs is just 19,800 — so more than 16,000 more fans got to watch Stoudamire and Co. take on the Bulls in 1996 than got to watch Kawhi Leonard and Co. take on the Warriors in the 2019 finals.
Despite being an expansion team, the Raptors were third in league attendance that season with 950,330 total fans.
The Raptors played two more full seasons at the Skydome, with only a handful of home games played at Maple Leaf Gardens. They moved into Air Canada Centre (now Scotiabank Arena) for good on Feb. 21, 1999.
In pulling this game out, the Raptors held the Bulls to 72 wins on the season. The team that finally beat the Bulls’ record? The Steve Kerr–coached Golden State Warriors, who went exactly 73-9 in 2015–16.

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