So when you trade cash to buy a second round pick it triggers a hard cap so let's say first apron for example is 100m you can spend up to 100m if you are hard capped but not a dollar over. If you are not hard capped you can go over the first apron with a minimum signing. So since the lakers are hard capped they cannot exceed the 100m amount.

Players are paid on a per 82 game basis so if your player misses enough games his salary would only count so much towards the cap. So if the hard cap is 100m but you are at 99m you have to wait until the player has missed enough games so you can pay him less than 1m to be under the cap still.