So then the thought is that the Lakers could trade Schroeder ($20M) + Kuzma ($13M) for Paul ($33M)
in a sign and trade? And then they could use their exceptions and player rights to still bring back Harrell, Caruso, Horton-Tucker.

But with LeBron ($41.2M), AD ($35.4M), CP3 ($33.3), KCP ($13M), Deng ($5M) and Gasol ($2.7M), you're already looking at a cost of $130.6M for those 5 players.

And because you did a S+T, the team is hard-capped at $140M.

So that means no Caruso or Harrell for sure - giving either of them even $7.5M (which would be a bargain) leaves only enough cap to sign two min players and 8 players isn't enough depth.

Even getting Horton-Tucker at $5M would mean the rest of the roster would be min salary players.

So you'd be left losing Schroeder/Kuzma/Caruso/Harrell for CP3 in that scenario and having no avenues to further improve because of the hard-cap.

Which would be fine if you were getting pieces in place to go above the apron the NEXT year, but not sure that makes sense, given Paul and James' age.

Paul/KCP/Horton-Tucker/LeBron/AD with a bench of Gasol and a bunch of min salary types

Or

Schroeder/KCP/LeBron/Kuzma/AD with a bench of Caruso/Horton-Tucker/Wes Mathews/Harrell/Gasol