Moving Gasol could accomplish two goals for Lakers management at this point: shedding salary to try to get under the luxury tax threshold and also adding a young piece or a draft pick it can use for the future.
When the Lakers-Cavs talks were still active, one league source described L.A.'s motivation to ESPNLosAngeles.com by saying, "The Lakers are in the assets-acquiring business."
The Lakers are approximately $8 million over the luxury tax line, so there are other ways they could get under without dealing Gasol.
Some combination of Steve Blake's $4 million expiring deal, Chris Kaman's $3.2 million contract or Jordan Hill's $3.5 million cap figure, along with a lesser contract or two, could accomplish the goal of getting under the luxury tax level of $71.7 million.
In the past, the Lakers simply swallowed hard and wrote a luxury tax check out to the league annually as sort of the cost of doing business when you're trying to perpetually field a contender, but under the new collective bargaining agreement, there is a far more punitive "repeater" luxury tax fee that a team has to pay unless it gets under the luxury tax two out of every four years.
While the Lakers' front office team of general manager Mitch Kupchak and executive vice president of player personnel Jim Buss will be left with the tough decisions to make in the next week, the rest of the Lakers will try to continue to operate like business as usual with a game against the Oklahoma City Thunder on Thursday and another against the Houston Rockets on Wednesday sandwiching the All-Star break.
#NoLimitTank 
Did I just see D-Fish just score off the dribble?