Mitch Kupchak admitted that the new, tougher rules governing the luxury tax will make it difficult for the Lakers to improve via free agency.

“I’d be surprised if we’re going to be very active,” Kupchak said of the impending free agency period. “Only because of the limitations on this franchise resulting from the collective bargaining agreement. ... You might not be able to really go out there and dramatically improve your team with a $1 million player or a $3 million player. But there’s value out there and we’ll search for it.”

Los Angeles is well over the salary cap, with just the mini-mid-level exception, veteran’s minimum and an $8.9 million trade exception at its disposal.

“Wouldn’t that be nice if a team gave us a player making $9 million or less to improve our team?” Kupchak said. “Obviously, the chances of that are not good. We’d probably have to move something back in the other direction just as good to make the other team happy. However, there are occurrences where teams look to get rid of a player that maybe doesn’t fit in or sometimes the trade exception can be used to make a more complicated trade. So it’s valuable to have, but it’s not like you can go out and sign a player making $9 million.”