CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Tyronn Lue watched the film from the Cavaliers' 2017 Finals losses to the Warriors, and saw some things he'd do differently if given the chance.

"But that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to work," Lue told cleveland.com in an interview this week, ahead of the 2017-18 training camp that starts Tuesday. "The Warriors are a great team, they'll be able to adjust, they have great players. But I've seen some things that I would experiment with and try to do."

Just what those experiments, those changes might be against a Warriors team that won 4-1 and blistered Cleveland with 121.6 points per game ... Lue didn't say.

What is clear as the Cavs get set to return to work next week is there have already been numerous changes made throughout the organization since that fifth Finals game, with potentially more to come, and they will cause Lue to adjust. More so than at any point in his first two seasons as Cavs coach.

Staying or going?

In the immediate aftermath of Game 5, a 129-120 triumph for the Warriors that clinched their second championship in three seasons against the Cavs, Cleveland seemed torn on whether or not to make radical alterations in an effort to close what some felt was a sizable gap with Golden State.

Cavs owner Dan Gilbert told cleveland.com that night he thought just small changes on the periphery were needed; that the direction of his organization was strong. And then he failed to bring back GM David Griffin and had a deal in place to ship Kevin Love off and net both Paul George and Eric Bledsoe. That would, umm, have constituted a major change or two.

As it is, Kyrie Irving is gone, traded to the Boston Celtics. You knew as much. Not only are his 25.2 points per game and critical shot-making ability in the fourth quarters gone, but he was a player who had the ball in his hands for a team-high 33.9 percent of all Cavs' possessions.

Naturally, you'd say, Irving would be involved in the offense as a point guard who can score. But his usage rate (33.9 percent) was higher than LeBron James' 32.1.

Irving is also one of the NBA's best and most frequent users of isolation plays. His 5.7 points per game out of isolation sets were third-highest in the NBA, and only five players in the league ran more iso plays than Irving. James wasn't among them.

A new offense

Irving's supposed replacement, Isaiah Thomas, who was part of the trade for Irving to Boston, has an injured hip that will cause him to miss at least the start of the season. Thomas similarly posted high usage and iso rates last year, but he was not playing alongside James and Kevin Love.

Anyway, with no Irving and, for at least a while, no Thomas, Lue is almost forced to implement more structure to the offense. Yes, James averaged 26.4 points and was close to Irving in usage and iso plays, but he would prefer the ball move.

"It's not going to be a total makeover," Lue said. "We're going to do some things different. Some more movement stuff. We have great cutters, (Jae) Crowder moves without the ball and Jeff Green moves without the ball, so we've got guys who can move without the ball. You know, RJ (Richard Jefferson) is a good cutter. Having Kevin and LeBron as passers at the elbows, and now you've got Jeff Green, who played in the Princeton offense at Georgetown, so we've got guys who can do multiple things now and different things. We've got to try to cater our offense to our players."

Crowder, a 6-6 wing who also came over with Thomas from the Celtics in the Irving trade, is so versatile and valuable as a defender and 3-point shooter that his presence could convince Lue to make dramatic changes to the starting lineup.

Minimum changes

Cleveland also added former NBA MVP Derrick Rose, Green, a 6-9 forward, and veteran point guard Jose Calderon -- all to veteran's minimum contracts. The Cavs also signed 22-year-old wing Cedi Osman, and acquired Ante Zizic, a 20-year-old center from the Celtics.

Either Jefferson or Iman Shumpert, two rotation staples for Lue the past two seasons, would seem to be fighting for playing time at the outset of camp.

"I know every year there's going to be a change, because, you know, that's just how the league is," said Lue, who played 11 seasons in the NBA. "You've got guys coming on minimum contracts to good teams like that. I never expected it to be one of our core guys (Irving). That was, that was surprising to me, but, other than that it happens every year."

Defensive woes

Lue took over David Blatt as coach in January of 2016 and in his first season guided the Cavs to the franchise's first title. He's in the second of a five-year, $35 million deal, and took some heat as the regular season wound down when the Cavs slipped to 22nd in the NBA in defense.

As the Cavs woes mounted, Lue promised a secret plan to fix the defense. His team entered the playoffs as a No. 2 seed, and promptly won its first 10 games.

But in the Finals, it was clear Cleveland had no answer defensively for the offensive juggernaut Warriors, who of course have Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green leading their attack.

Some within the Cavs' organization at the time felt Cleveland's slippage defensively during the regular season cost the team in the Finals, when the margin for error in defending the Warriors is miniscule.

The theory went that everyone, from Lue, to James, to the rest of the players, should've demanded more defensively in February and March.

Lue told cleveland.com he disagreed totally with that critique.

"We came out and won 10 straight games in the playoffs, and it was the same thing the year before that," Lue said. "The first two games they (the Warriors) blew us out by 15 or 20 and until you get a chance to really play with those guys and be on the court with them, it's going to be tough to simulate them in practice or walk through.

"I thought Game 3 we came out and did a great job, I thought we should've won that game," Lue continued. "Game 4 we did win, so we made the adjustment we needed to make and they won. I wouldn't say it was because of February and March that, defensively, we wasn't playing great. Plus we didn't have all our guys. J.R. (Smith) being out, Kevin being out, and it was just a lot of different pieces. (Kyle) Korver being new to our system. It was a lot of different things."