NEW YORK -- The headlines were all over the papers and Internet last season: "Tyronn Lue's secret plan to fix the Cavs' bad defense."

Well, it's back.

Before the Cavs played the Knicks in the penultimate game of the regular season Monday, he said Cleveland's porous defense (the word I used in last season's headline, and hey, it still works) would be "totally different next week."

"We'll probably do things we haven't done all season when it comes to the playoffs, things we've been working on all year," Lue said. "It's the same thing we do every playoffs. So, we'll see what happens."

The Cavs entered play Monday with the NBA's 29th-ranked defense -- that's second to last -- with a rating of 109.5 (it means the Cavs give up an average of 109.5 points per 100 possessions).

Since Feb. 8, when the Cavs traded six players in return for George Hill, Rodney Hood, Larry Nance Jr., and Jordan Clarkson, they're ranked 19th with a 108.7 rating. Nineteenth is of course better than second to last, but there's obviously still room for improvement.

Each year since LeBron James returned, the Cavs have saved certain defensive schemes for the playoffs.

It became news last season because the Cavs entered last season's playoffs with the 29th-ranked defense since March 1 (and 22nd overall). Lue said then that: "we've got to hold back. We can't show our hand early because ... these are some good teams and we don't want them to be able to come into a series and be able to adjust to what we do."

The Cavs' defensive rating was worse in the playoffs than the regular season last year, by three-tenths of a percentage point. So did the secret plans work? Cleveland of course reached the Finals, and was ranked eighth defensively out of 16 playoff teams.

The Cavs actually haven't quite held onto all their secret defenses this season, showing more blitzes in pick-and-roll coverages than in years past. Lue said that's because with new players, he's had to see if they could handle the more complex coverages, and there hasn't been enough opportunities in practice to do that.

"I think we had a team that the last three years, before this year, we had pretty much in place, so we knew when the playoffs started, things we wanted to do, things we worked on all season, we knew we were capable of doing," Lue said. "But with the new guys we gotta see what they're able to do, so it's been tough trying to balance the two."

Lue ran the Cavs' defense in 1 1/2 seasons under David Blatt. When Lue became head coach in January, 2016, he hired Mike Longabardi to coordinate the defense, but Lue largely designs the defensive schemes in the playoffs.