CP3-to-Lakers thread: Simplest framework out there to match salaries is Green, Bradley, Kuzma, Cook (fully guaranteed), McGee, & #28 pick (30 days after being signed). But Lakers are sending out too many pieces in this (6-for-1) and it's contingent on Bradley and McGee opting in.

There is another framework that requires less players going out and isn't contingent on player options. It involves sign-and-trading Pope to OKC on a deal with a near-max first-year salary. Lakers can do this because they hold his full bird rights.

One caveat of sign-and-trades is that the contract of the free agent being sign-and-traded (Pope) must run for at least three seasons. However, only the first year must be fully guaranteed. This means the Thunder could acquire Pope on essentially an expiring contract.

To acquire Chris Paul in a trade, a team must send out $32,987,051 in outgoing salary at a minimum to match salaries. While giving Pope a near max salary sounds like it's enough, he actually would only count as 50% of that on the Lakers end due to Base Year Compensation.

Let's say Green and Kuzma are in the deal. Lakers would be $14,059,020 short of matching salaries for Paul. Base Year Compensation would require the Lakers to give Pope a starting salary of 2x that amount ($28,118,040) to reach the minimum outgoing salary requirement for Paul.

Here is one example of how Pope's contract could be structured, with 5% annual decreases in case OKC want to keep him beyond the first season. The second and third seasons can be completely non-guaranteed.

On OKC's end, the trade works. They don't need to jump through any hoops like the Lakers do. Only thing is that acquiring Pope in a sign-and-trade activates the hard cap for them. It shouldn't be an issue since they're unlikely to be in the luxury tax anyways.

Here is what the Lakers payroll could look like if they do this trade and re-sign several players. They could be heavily in the luxury tax and over the hard cap, limiting them to the taxpayer MLE ($5.7M), which could be used to re-sign Markieff Morris.