In this case, the Thunder would have to orchestrate a sign-and-trade with the Lakers. Los Angeles would need to sign Gasol into its salary cap space, which could give Gasol a contract twice as large as he’d get simply by signing with the Thunder, and take back Perkins and perhaps a few pot-sweeteners.

Under league rules, contracts that are consummated in sign-and-trade deals must be for at least three years in length. That’s a bit of an issue for a Thunder team looking to keep the books as clean as possible for the 2016-17 season, the first year of Kevin Durant’s potential new deal. But here’s where the Thunder would need to get creative.

For the Thunder’s purposes, the final year of a three-year deal for Gasol ideally would be non-guaranteed or partially guaranteed. Gasol will be 36 at that time and might balk at financially uncertainty by then. If so, an alternative is to frontload the deal, which would be mutually beneficial for Gasol and the Thunder. The player gets financial security. The team gets a critically-important descending salary that helps sustain increasing salaries on Durant, Russell Westbrook and others.

Using the latter scenario, the Thunder hypothetically could take on Gasol with a generous three-year, $33.3 million contract that has a first-year salary of $12 million — which adds only $3 million to what Perkins was set to make but keeps OKC beneath the tax threshold — and a third-year salary of $10.2 million.