Stacey King Dies at 59: Remembering the Bulls Champion Who Became Chicago's Voice

Stacey King wore three championship rings, but ask any Bulls fan under 35 about him and they'll skip the playing career entirely. They'll do the impressions. "Give me the hot sauce!" "Too big! Too strong! Too fast! Too good!" King, who died Wednesday at 59, spent more of his life narrating Chicago basketball than playing it — and somehow, both chapters defined an era.

The Bulls confirmed his passing, and within minutes the tributes started piling up from former teammates, broadcast partners, and a fan base that adopted King twice: once as a role player on a dynasty, and again as the color analyst who made losing seasons watchable.

A Champion in the Shadow of Giants

King arrived in Chicago as the No. 6 overall pick in the 1989 NBA Draft out of Oklahoma, where he'd been a consensus All-American and a Wooden Award finalist. Landing on a roster with Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Horace Grant meant his ceiling as a pro was always going to be situational. He embraced it.

Across four seasons with the Bulls, King became a useful frontcourt body off the bench during the first three-peat — 1991, 1992, and 1993. He wasn't a stat-sheet headliner. He was, in the parlance of that era, a guy who knew the assignment: bang in the post, foul when needed, and let Jordan cook.

He later played for the Timberwolves, Celtics, and briefly overseas before retiring in the late '90s. By the traditional metrics of NBA legacy, King's playing career was solid but unremarkable. By the metric that actually matters in Chicago — rings — he was royalty.

The Second Act That Made Him a Legend

King joined the Bulls' broadcast booth in 2007 alongside play-by-play man Neil Funk, and the pairing clicked into something rare: an analyst who sounded like a fan in the best section of the United Center. His catchphrases became Chicago folklore. "Hallelujah!" after a Derrick Rose dagger. The drawn-out "Get the hot sauuuce!" The exasperated, hilarious frustration during the lean years.

King's gift was tonal honesty. When the Bulls were good, he sounded euphoric. When they were bad, he sounded exactly as annoyed as the audience at home. In a broadcast era increasingly polished into beige, he was unmistakably a person — opinionated, loud, generous with credit, blunt with criticism.

That's harder than it looks. Plenty of ex-players try the booth and never get past clichés. King built a second career that arguably outshone his first, becoming as synonymous with Bulls basketball in the 2010s as Rose, Joakim Noah, or Jimmy Butler.

What He Leaves Behind

King's death at 59 lands hard for a generation of fans who grew up with his voice as the soundtrack to their fandom. He was a bridge: someone who'd been in the huddle with Jordan and Phil Jackson, who could speak with authority about what a championship locker room actually feels like, and who translated that for the post-dynasty audience without ever sounding like he was lecturing.

Details about cause of death have not been publicly shared as of this writing. The Bulls organization, in its statement, called him family — a word that gets thrown around loosely in sports, but in King's case feels accurate. He worked there, in one role or another, for most of his adult life.

A Chicago Voice

There's a specific kind of grief reserved for broadcasters. Players retire and disappear into other lives. Broadcasters live in your living room for 82 nights a year, every year, for decades. They become ambient. You don't realize how much of your relationship with a team runs through their voice until that voice is gone.

Chicago lost that voice this week. The hot sauce, the hallelujahs, the unfiltered joy of a guy who never forgot how lucky he was to be in the building — all of it. Stacey King was 59. The Bulls, and basketball, are quieter without him.