A new report is shedding fresh light on the death of former Chicago Bulls standout Stacey King, offering a possible clue about the circumstances surrounding the NBA great’s passing.
While questions remain, the report provides the only public information yet regarding the events that may have contributed to King’s death at age 59.
The report came from David Kaplan of ESPN Chicago, who said on Sunday that a fall at home led to King’s death. The Bulls have confirmed his death but not an official cause, and no medical record has surfaced. Yet neither the Bulls nor King’s family has publicly disputed Kaplan’s account as of Monday morning.
“Absolutely devastated to hear that Stacey King has passed away at the age of 59 after a fall at his home,” Kaplan wrote in a Saturday social media message. He went on to say King made watching the Bulls fun no matter how the season was going.
Stacey King’s Reported Cause of Death
King arrived as the sixth overall pick in the 1989 draft, joining the Bulls right before the franchise seized the decade. He spent five seasons in Chicago and earned championship rings in 1991, 1992 and 1993 alongside Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen.
The numbers never told his story. Over eight seasons and 438 regular-season games, with later stops in Dallas, Minnesota, Boston and Miami, King averaged 6.4 points and 3.3 rebounds in fewer than 17 minutes a night, according to Yahoo Sports‘ J.P. Hoornstra. Before that, he was a consensus first-team All-American at Oklahoma and led the nation in rebounding as a senior, Hoornstra noted.
NBA insider Shams Charania confirmed the shape of that résumé, a three-time champion across eight seasons after going No. 6 in 1989, in a post shared to X.
King’s second act turned him into a household voice. He joined the Bulls’ broadcasts in 2006, climbed to color analyst, paired with play-by-play man Adam Amin from the 2020-21 season on, and won an Emmy along the way, according to a Men’s Journal report by Andrew McCarty.
“Stacey King was a cherished member of the Bulls family and one of the truly unique personalities in our organization’s history,” chairman Jerry Reinsdorf said in the franchise’s official statement. King is survived by his four sons, Erick, Garrett, Brandon and Mason.
Stacey King’s Age and the Risk of Fatal Falls
So why has the word “fall” drawn this much scrutiny? The answer sits in King’s age. National fall-injury data centers on adults significantly older than 59.
More than one in four Americans 65 and older fall each year, and a single fall doubles the odds of another, according to data published by the CDC. Those falls drive roughly 3 million emergency room visits a year and rank as the most common cause of traumatic brain injuries.
The global picture is heavier still. Falls stand as the second-leading cause of unintentional-injury death, trailing only traffic crashes, with an estimated 684,000 of them turning fatal each year, according to the World Health Organization. Adults older than 60 absorb the largest share of those deaths.
The danger usually builds when several risk factors stack together. Complicating risk factors include lower-body weakness, trouble with balance and vision, sedatives and similar medications, and home hazards such as loose rugs or uneven steps. At 59, King sat just below the age window where those vulnerabilities tend to take hold.
That distance between his age and the typical risk profile is much of why the missing official cause has drawn attention. Until the family or the team says more, Kaplan’s account stands as the only public account of how King died.
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