All the smoke for Lonzo or Lowry to the Lakers never made sense - they both want to get paid, and as you said - the Pelicans have Lonzo's bird rights so why do this?

It's definitely to get a core of Zion/Lowry/Ingram + whatever else - they do have a lot of assets. They just freed up what, like 34 million? It was stupid of them to trade for and then IMMEDIATELY extend Steven Adams, but then again - better to fix the mistake instead of thinking it's a sunken cost I guess.