Another NBA trade deadline passed Thursday with a familiar sense of dissatisfaction in Chicago.

Is that … it?

Sure, the Bulls didn’t stand pat this time. Change finally came in the form of trading longtime star Zach LaVine, a years-long goal the front office finally accomplished Sunday with a three-team trade that sent LaVine to the Sacramento Kings. While the move came as a shock to some teammates, the breakup was a necessary heartache for both LaVine and the Bulls to start over with a (somewhat) clean slate.

But outside of moving LaVine, the front office didn’t accomplish any of its other goals for this trade window. The Bulls were unable to deal Coby White or Nikola Vucevic despite negotiations for both players that continued up until the final buzzer at 2 p.m. Thursday. And while the Bulls listened to light interest in point guard Lonzo Ball, they ultimately chose to re-sign him to a team-friendly two-year deal.

Despite the lack of additional deals, executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnišovas expressed bland optimism about the team’s productivity at the deadline.

“We like what happened,” Karnišovas said during a news conference at the Advocate Center. “Every trade deadline, there’s a lot of opportunities. There’s a lot of calls that you have to make. There’s a lot of calls you’re going to receive. It’s pretty busy until the last second. But I’m happy with where we landed.”

Besides freeing up salary-cap flexibility, the Bulls didn’t gain much in the LaVine trade. Their haul included regaining full rights to their 2025 first-round pick they were already on track to retain and a handful of role players — Kevin Huerter, Tre Jones and Zach Collins — that will contribute to further clogging up the backcourt.

Without moving any other players, the Bulls failed to add a single new draft pick in this window — the primary goal for any team attempting to pivot toward building around young talent. They didn’t gain any capital to build forward momentum despite giving up their most talented player — a continuing trend after they parted with DeMar DeRozan and Alex Caruso over the summer without recouping a single first-round pick.

Karnišovas refused to go into specifics on any of the offers the Bulls received for LaVine, White or Vucevic, saying he wouldn’t “talk about hypotheticals.” But it’s clear the Bulls struggled to find strong offers despite a tumultuous week of trades across the league.

Holding out for a better offer has its merits. In many ways, the difference between a good and great NBA executive lies in the ability to win a high-stakes game of chicken.

But the Bulls now have followed this pattern for multiple trade cycles, passing on low-ball offers only to allow themselves to be rushed at the next window, ultimately dumping players such as LaVine and Caruso for little gain.

This year was no different. Karnišovas listed three types of assets the Bulls targeted throughout the past year, prioritized in this order: draft compensation, young players and flexibility. But they have been able to acquire only the bottom two priorities, missing out on opportunities to amass draft capital both last summer and this week.

Karnišovas said he felt “no urgency” to trade Vucevic or White at the deadline. Nor did he express any urgency to focus on accruing more draft capital this summer, when the Bulls once again will attempt to shop the same group of players.

Instead, he continued to emphasize his optimism surrounding a familiar goal: the possibility of, for the third consecutive season, competing in the play-in tournament.

“The next 30 games will determine if we will be in the play-in and playoffs,” Karnišovas said. “This is something that is achievable and our guys are capable of getting there.”

Karnišovas wants to paint this as a “best of both worlds” situation. After reclaiming full rights to their 2025 first-round pick from the San Antonio Spurs in the LaVine trade, the Bulls are no longer reliant on a bottom-10 finish in the league standings to protect the pick. They’re free to set their young core loose to chase a playoff berth.

But that freedom belies the actual issue at hand. The Bulls are a team in need of a star. Their best avenue for obtaining one is through the draft. Trading away LaVine only deepened their need to plummet as low in the standings as possible, thereby improving their odds of landing one of the highly touted young stars in this year’s draft.

Still, Karnišovas is fixated on the short term.

“If we, with this young team, can make the play-in and the playoffs, I think it’s going to be an accomplishment,” Karnišovas said. “Because if your young guys are developing and that translates into wins, I think there’s growth.”

Some of this might be the semantic soft-shoeing of an executive attempting to avoid a league investigation into tanking.

Maybe. But reclaiming this year’s pick seems to have given the Bulls the luxury of remaining in their comfort zone of mediocrity.

That’s a space where Karnišovas seems content to reside — even as he claims to embrace the need for rapid reconstruction.

“Changes needed to be made and we’re taking the opportunity to learn, pivot and take necessary steps to reshape our team,” Karnišovas said. “These moves help us to be more in control of our future. I know fans want a specific plan and we are charting that path now. We are not done yet. We’re in a transitional phase and there’s more to come.”

In 2021, Karnišovas put together a group. It didn’t work. The Bulls didn’t win. And now it’s taking the front office the better part of two years to untangle that failed experiment and begin again.

This deadline marked progress for the Bulls. But it’s slow and unwieldy, leaving them once again waiting for the next window to take the next step in what is guaranteed to be a laborious rebuilding process.

Patience is no longer a virtue for the Bulls front office. Instead it has become a vice. And once again, Bulls fans are left waiting for something — anything — to change.