LAS VEGAS (AP) — For San Antonio, the NBA Cup final was an education. A painful education.

The Spurs let an 11-point third quarter lead slip away and then some on Tuesday night, falling to the New York Knicks 124-113 in the Cup championship game.

San Antonio led 92-81 with 2 minutes left in the third quarter, when Victor Wembanyama — who played off the bench once again as he works his way back from a strained left calf — connected on a deep 3-pointer.

The score the rest of the way: Knicks 43, Spurs 21. San Antonio shot 6 for 23 over those final 14 minutes. It got outrebounded 25-8 — a staggering differential. The Knicks outscored the Spurs 18-4 in the paint over that stretch, too.

All one-sided numbers, and that's how the game got away.

“It’s do-or-die, I think, out there,” said Spurs rookie Dylan Harper, who led San Antonio with 21 points off the bench. "You’ve seen the level of intensity rise up for us, and them. Obviously, they came out with the win. But for us, it's not taking anything for granted; I think that's the biggest thing. When we all go out there, we all know that we've got to play 110% in order to win things like this.”

The Knicks wound up splitting about $5 million in additional bonus money, pushing their total to $530,933 per player for winning the Cup. The Spurs had to settle — such as it is — for $212,373 each.

"I'm assuming that we're feeling pretty frustrated because we lost the game," Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said. "I’m also feeling after 25 games in, I believe, that we’ve shown some signs that we can be a pretty good team. And we’ve also shown that we have a lot of areas of improvement. And I think that’s where we’re living today and hopefully tomorrow. We can continue to get a little bit better and minimize some of the things that we need to improve on.”

The Spurs are 18-7; Tuesday's loss doesn't factor into the record for this season. They've had four of their key players — Wembanyama, Harper, De'Aaron Fox and Stephon Castle — together for exactly two games, those being the Cup semifinal win over Oklahoma City on Saturday and the Cup final loss to the Knicks. The only teams in the Western Conference with better records than the Spurs right now are the Thunder and Denver.

There's a lot to like, even on a night that didn't go San Antonio's way.

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LAS VEGAS (AP) — The NBA is not sure how long the various investigations and legal processes surrounding gambling charges faced by Miami guard Terry Rozier, Portland coach and Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Chauncey Billups and others will take to be completed, Commissioner Adam Silver said Tuesday.

But the league will look into the possibility of giving Miami some sort of “satisfactory relief,” Silver added, though he stopped short of saying such a move would be possible.

“This is an unprecedented situation,” Silver said.

It's a multi-layered issue for the league and the Heat, given that Rozier's $26.6 million salary takes up about 17% of the team's cap space — and that the team still owes Charlotte a first-round pick in either 2027 or 2028 to satisfy the terms of the trade that brought Rozier to Miami.

Rozier pleaded not guilty earlier this month to wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy charges stemming from accusations that he helped some friends win bets that revolved around his statistical performance in a game played in March 2023, when he was with Charlotte. Rozier is free on $3 million bond and isn’t expected back in court until March, and he remains on unpaid leave from the Heat.

Prosecutors say Rozier informed the bettors that he intended to leave the game against the New Orleans Pelicans early with a supposed injury, allowing gamblers to place wagers earning them tens of thousands of dollars. Rozier played the first nine minutes and 36 seconds of the game before leaving, citing a foot issue. He did not play again that season and was subsequently traded to the Heat.

Rozier isn’t receiving his pay, but his salary is still on the Heat's books and is being sent to an interest-bearing account pending resolution of his case or some other agreement.

“We're going to try to work something through, work this out with them,” Silver said. “But there’s no obvious solution here. I would just say that there’s no doubt at the moment they have a player that can't perform services for them. ... Obviously, he hasn’t been convicted of anything yet either — but this is an unfortunate circumstance. Sometimes there’s these unique events and maybe sometimes they require a unique solution.”

Billups also pleaded not guilty last month to charges related to a separate scheme to fix high-stakes, Mafia-backed poker games. Rozier, Billups and former NBA guard Damon Jones were among more than 30 people — including several Mafia figures — arrested in October as part of a sprawling federal takedown of illegal gambling operations linked to pro sports.

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There are six Russian sliders on the entry list for this weekend's World Cup luge races in Lake Placid, New York, all hoping to accumulate enough standings points to earn a berth at this winter's Milan Cortina Olympics.

They are scheduled to be part of official training on Tuesday, in a session that also will include athletes from Bosnia and Herzegovina, China, Croatia, Finland, Britain, Canada, South Korea, Ireland and Estonia. The Russians are on the start list as AIN, or Individual Neutral Athletes.

Ukrainian athletes — who have made clear that they aren't comfortable with the notion of Russians being allowed to compete — are all in a different session of training Tuesday, the first day of official preparations at the Mount Van Hoevenberg track.

Training continues Wednesday, followed by a Nations Cup race — essentially a qualifier for the World Cup races — on Thursday. It's likely that the Russians will slide in the Nations Cup race before getting spots in the World Cup men's and women's singles luge events in Lake Placid.

Russians have not taken part in a World Cup luge race since January 2022, part of the response that the International Luge Federation — and other sport governing bodies — had to that country's invasion of Ukraine.

The International Olympic Committee wants Russians — in many sports — to have the opportunity to compete as neutral athletes at the Milan Cortina Games. Luge, like some other sports, originally refused to allow any Russians to take part this year, then amended those decisions after appeals.

The race in Lake Placid is the third of five races that will count toward Olympic qualifying, and the Russians need some results to enhance their odds of grabbing a berth for Milan Cortina. None of the Russians is expected to be a contender; of the six trying to compete now, only two have previous experience on the World Cup circuit.

The last two qualifying races for luge, in Latvia and Germany, may be difficult for the Russians to enter because the process of getting visas for those countries could be problematic. The Russians said last week that the U.S. granted them visas to come to races in Utah last weekend and Lake Placid this weekend; they skipped the Utah race for reasons that remain unclear.

Meanwhile, International Bobsled and Skeleton Federation said last week it was deeming nine Russians eligible for its races this season. None of those sliders is entered in this weekend's World Cup skeleton races in Latvia.

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