Milwaukee Bucks center Brook Lopez, front left, looks to shoot against Atlanta Hawks guard Trae Young, front right, during the second half of a semifinal game in the NBA Cup basketball tournament Saturday, Dec. 14, 2024, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Ian Maule)

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The NBA Cup finalists had different styles in how they play. And how they spend.

Tuesday night's title game in Las Vegas between Milwaukee and Oklahoma City pitted a team in the Bucks that's over the NBA's second apron — a threshold that, once exceeded, limits ways that teams can trade for or sign players — and a team in the Thunder below the first apron.

In NBA Commissioner Adam Silver's eyes, that might be fitting.

“I think it's great for the new (collective bargaining agreement),” Silver said Tuesday in a meeting with reporters before the NBA Cup title game , which Milwaukee won 97-81. “At the same time, there is a correlation between success on the floor and spending — and that’s the reason behind the second apron. We're not trying to make any secret out of it.”

The aprons are certainly going to limit how some teams make trades in the coming months. Earlier this season, when Minnesota and New York were trying to finalize the trade that sent Karl-Anthony Towns to the Knicks, Timberwolves basketball operations president Tim Connelly said the new CBA rules were complex to navigate.

“The new rules … some of the consequences are unintended, quite frankly,” Connelly said this fall. “I don’t know if anyone intended to make it this challenging to make moves, to make trades when you’re above certain aprons.”

Silver reiterated that the league knew what some of the new challenges would be.

“I understand the frustration of some of the general managers because particularly if you go over the apron, we’ve cut down on your flexibility,” Silver said Tuesday. “But that was the very intent of the second apron and with the goal being to have a better distribution of star talent around the league. And I think we’ve been successful in doing that.”

It's the league's stance that big-market and big-spending teams can win, and smaller-market and lesser-spending teams can do the same. Milwaukee is one of four teams currently over the second apron, along with Boston, Phoenix and Minnesota.

“There's many different ways to win,” Silver said.

Cup final future

The NBA Cup is coming back next season. The question is if the NBA Cup is coming back to Las Vegas.

The NBA's new broadcast agreements begin next season, and one of the league's new partners — Amazon — will be covering the knockout round of the tournament. But there's been no decision on where the 2025 title game will be played.

“There has been some interest expressed by teams in playing in the home markets,” Silver said. “It’s complicated enough scheduling a neutral site. I’m not against playing in our markets.

He said the question to figure out is how it would work a scheduling standpoint. There's a flip side of the coin, that being the league has liked how the first two years of the event have been received in Las Vegas.

“You start to build in tradition, you have a lot of fans who can circle these dates on their calendar and plan to come to Las Vegas, plan a holiday around it,” Silver said. "I think the teams are on both sides. I think they like the idea of winning that opportunity to play at home. But then you’ve got to move tickets very short term. We have some experience doing that in the playoffs, but this is a little bit different.”

But if Bucks coach Doc Rivers gets a vote, it'd stay in Vegas.

“Right here. Right here,” Rivers said after his team won the title Tuesday night. “Listen, I was proven wrong in a very good way. I was worried that if a (Los Angeles) team wasn't in the Cup we couldn't get enough people in the crowd. And the people from Las Vegas showed up. It was packed today and that's huge — not only for Vegas, but for the league.”

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