The San Antonio Spurs beat the Cleveland Cavaliers 99-95 in one of the highlight games of the NBA regular season on Thursday night.

While it was close throughout much of the game, in the fourth quarter the Spurs' unselfish, smart offense picked apart a Cavs team that looked disjointed on both ends.

Specifically, the Spurs seemed to realize late that they could get what they wanted by going right at Kevin Love on the defensive end.

Love has never been a great defender, but the Cavaliers, despite their offensive weapons, are an elite defensive team, ranking sixth in defensive rating. With solid defenders in LeBron James, Iman Shumpert, and Tristan Thompson, the Cavs are often able to hide Love on defense or simply ask him to be competent, and they can usually get by.

The Spurs exposed that on Thursday night in a way only the smartest teams can.

In the fourth quarter, the Spurs often put Love in pick-and-rolls, forcing him to make tough choices to deny penetration or stop the dive to the basket by his own man.

Here in the fourth quarter, Spurs guard Patty Mills hit a momentous three-pointer after the Spurs ran a double screen for him, leaving Love as the last man on defense. Love dropped back to deny the penetration, and Mills took advantage.

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Things worsened for the Cavs when the Spurs were able to attack Love and Kyrie Irving, another weak defender. This is not entirely Love's fault, but clearly Love and Irving botched the coverage. They never communicated if they were switching or were going to recover, and by the time they realized, they left one of the most dangerous midrange shooters in Tony Parker wide open:

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This is not ideal coverage:

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With one minute left, the Spurs just went to Tim Duncan in isolation. They cleared out the entire left side of the floor, and while Love played respectable defense and likely got scored on because of a height disadvantage, the fact that the Spurs chose to run this play down the stretch speaks volumes:

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