An affine Hecke algebras can be realized as an equivariant $K$-group of the corresponding Steinberg variety. This gives rise naturally to some two-sided ideals of the affine Hecke algebra by means of the closures of nilpotent orbits of the corresponding Lie algebra. In this paper we will show that the two-sided ideals are in fact the two-sided ideals of the affine Hecke algebra defined through two-sided cells of the corresponding affine Weyl group after the two-sided ideals are tensored by $\mathbb{Q}$. This...