The Chicago Bulls went into the 2022 NBA trade deadline with a 34-21 record, which has them near the top of the Eastern Conference. The Bulls are also still dealing with a number of long-term injuries to Lonzo Ball, Alex Caruso, Patrick Williams and Derrick Jones Jr., which have set the team back of late after a surprisingly hot start to the season.

These players are all expected back before the end of the regular season. With this in mind and without a whole lot of trade ammo at their disposal, the Bulls didn't make a single trade before Thursday's deadline … and that was their biggest mistake.

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Bulls' biggest 2022 NBA trade deadline mistake: Doing nothing

There wasn't all that much buzz surrounding the Bulls heading into the deadline. There was some early Jerami Grant chatter that didn't going anywhere, and names like Dennis Schroder and Jakob Poeltl also came up. But Chicago clearly didn't want to trade Williams and didn't seem to have any interest in trading Coby White either. This is understandable and meant there wouldn't be anything of real significance done.

Still, given the Bulls' injuries and current lack of depth, it would have been nice to see some movement around the margins. Chicago had the contracts of Jones and Troy Brown Jr. to trade, plus a $5 million trade exception. While the Bulls don't have much draft capital, they did have a lottery-protected first-round pick from the Portland Trail Blazers to use. But they didn't do anything, instead opting for continuity and a hope that the injured players will come back toward the end of the season and help push this team to a deep playoff run.

That very well could happen, because this Bulls team has looked mostly great when healthy. The return of those players will hopefully transform the defense back into a formidable force, because Chicago has been getting torched on that end with them out. Ball and Caruso are especially important at the point of attack, while Williams and Jones are needed to help out a frontcourt that's rather weak outside of Nikola Vucevic and, to a much lesser extent, Javonte Green.

On the latest episode of Blue Wire's Cash Considerations podcast, we discussed the Bulls' inactivity ahead of the trade deadline and expressed our disappointment, especially after so many fellow contenders made notable moves around them:

Chicago does still have the buyout market to scour, and making some additions there will be important to help with the depth over the next month or so. It's still going to be a while until the cavalry returns, and the schedule starts to really ramp up after the All-Star break. The Bulls don't want to put too much pressure on DeMar DeRozan, Zach LaVine and Vucevic, especially because LaVine has dealt with a number of injuries already this season. The Bulls All-Star just recently missed games with a knee problem, and that was then followed up by back spams.

So, it wasn't a good trade deadline for the Bulls thanks to their own inaction and the action of other rivals. There's no reason to panic, though, because they could make up for it on the buyout market and will hopefully have a number of key players returning to help turn them back into a legitimate contender once again.

Cash Considerations: A Chicago Bulls Podcast is part of the Blue Wire Podcast Network. The pod can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts.