The lakers do have an intriguing offseason ahead of them with the draft scheduled tonight and free agency just around the corner they are in an interesting position. With buddy hield and lowry's names swirling in rumors. While the path to buddy hield is quite simple as it is the most realistic ( kuz + one of kcp or trezz and the lakers pick ) for hield the path to lowry gets more complicated without having the lakers hardcapping themselves as any sign and trade deal will hard cap them. So the only real way the lakers could get lowry is through clearing salary. Here's how they do it.
Buddy for kuz and trezz is hardly a change in salary. In terms of contracts its a near perfect deal. Kuz is scheduled to make in 13M thanks to his extension taking him off his poison pill contract that made him hard to deal in seasons prior. Trezz makes about 9M in salary so its a near perfect match as buddy makes 22M.
To get lowry the lakers have to get under the nba salary cap which is set at 106M dollars. To do this they have to move on from kcp and pick up no salary in return. The good news is kcp is one of the most valuable laker assets. One of the best backcourt defenders in the leauge and a 40% shooter from three. I could see a team like Dallas that desperately needs defense and vet presence make a move for him and offer up a top 10 protected FRP.
This puts the lakers under the 106 cap where then they would be able to renounce the rights on dennis schroder making it so that they can't use bird rights to retain him in the event that they wish to bring him back over the cap. This frees up his cap hold and opens up 27M in cap space. That number does drop to 22M due to the luol deng contract but it is still enough to field a competitive offer for lowry.
The lakers could offer up 2 yr 44M or potentially more if they offload mckinne and gasol which would push the number to about 25M but I do think that he'd commit to 2 year 44 if it meant competing for a title something that none of his suitors outside of really miami can offer.
With the lakers under the hardcap they can bring back both caruso and tucker while also being able to offer vet minimums which is important given the latest report regarding LA stating that if the lakers were able to pull of a big move multiple vets would be willing to join on the i=min order to play for them. The lakers would also have their mid level exception which they can use to bring in some additional talent