INDEPENDENCE, Ohio -- As the regular season started to wind down, the Cleveland Cavaliers began using practice sessions -- the rare times they actually held them -- to start working on possible playoff schemes. Then they slowly unveiled those strategies in games down the stretch.

One of them: LeBron James playing center in a devastating small lineup.

Was it part of a bigger playoff plan or was head coach Tyronn Lue forced into the lineup because Tristan Thompson's thumb injury left them short on bigs?

"My thing is just touch on it and see how it looks so we can have a feel for how to play that way," Lue said following practice this week. "In the playoffs it's a game of adjustments and what you can do best and you throw the other team off. So we just tried a lot of things this season, just see what works best, a lot of different lineups. And it could play a role, it could play a factor in the playoffs.

"Just a game of chicken and you gotta see what happens."

James playing center may not be a staple for the Cavaliers. The primary minutes for him in that spot came when Lue put Channing Frye in the starting lineup during Thompson's absence. Frye is usually a mainstay in the start-of-the-second-quarter group, but with Thompson sidelined, Lue chose to use James' versatility to his advantage, especially with the Cavs lacking another competent center.

There were other times throughout the season as well. According to nbawowy, the Cavs outscored opponents by 26 points in 83 total minutes using James at the 5.

"If he's our biggest guy on the floor, he has to rebound a lot more," Lue said. "But then that also creates another mismatch for the team that's playing against us. If Bron's at the 5, then they've got to put a 5 on someone, a bigger guy on somebody."

Another byproduct is a natural increase in pace, the way the Cavs want to play all the time. With James as the primary rebounder, he can grab the ball off the glass and start the fast break himself. If not him then Richard Jefferson, Iman Shumpert or one of the other wings can do it.

On the offensive end, the floor is spaced, giving James room to attack. On defense, James plays closer to the basket, with more aggression. His unique combination of size, speed & smarts helps to cover a lot of ground quickly and erase teammates' mistakes while also serving as the vocal conductor. The defensive rating, a problem area all season, improved by five points per 48 minutes.

Lue said Friday that he's not expecting to use new rotations or lineup combinations right away. He wants to keep some tricks up his sleeve for the later rounds and will lean on the lineups that got the Cavs to this point. But if he's forced to adjust he will.

After all, it wasn't until the second round when Lue unleashed a Frye-Kevin Love frontcourt that baffled the Hawks and led to a 3-point barrage.

Up until that point, the four previous games against the Detroit Pistons, Frye had played 29 total minutes, scoring just three points. Lue was waiting for the right time, the right matchup. He found it against the Hawks.

Even though that particular adjustment looked fresh, the team worked on those situations behind the scenes, when no one was around.

Given the lack of practice time in March and April this season, the Cavs didn't have that same ability. Instead, they were forced to make those changes during games.

On March 30 against the Chicago Bulls, a game that ended with a team meeting following yet another loss, the Cavs trapped shooting guard Jimmy Butler until the Bulls adjusted, putting the ball in Rajon Rondo's hands.

A few nights later, the Cavs did the same thing against Isaiah Thomas, blitzing him in the pick-and-roll, flustering him with an extra defender. Either he gave the ball up in the middle of the floor to offensively challenged Amir Johnson -- a win for the defense -- or he tried to attack another way. Thomas finished the game 1-of-8 from 3-point range and was held below his season scoring average for the first time in four meetings against Cleveland.

Those games gave Lue an outlet to test tactics, try to see what will and won't work. The final few games provided a taste of what's to come in the postseason.

"We've done it," Lue said of trying to implement those tweaks on the fly. "We've worked on it throughout the course of the season and we've done it the last two seasons also. We just didn't use some of it. But we always worked on things that we could possibly use in the playoffs so guys adapted to it well because we had done it before. We will see. We will see how it goes."

At the very least, the James-at-center experiment could give Lue confidence to go back to it.

Maybe it's later in this upcoming series if the Pacers go small. Or maybe it's part of Cleveland's grand plan if there's a threequel in the Cleveland-Golden State series. The Warriors often finish games with Draymond Green playing center and James would be a logical counter.

The opponent now has something else to think about. And it gives Lue, who is known league wide for his smart adjustments and crafty schemes, another wrinkle.

"Nothing changes for me, not in the postseason," James said when asked about playing center. "I am who I am in the postseason. I am who I am all year, but I get even more locked in throughout the postseason, understanding the magnitude of the games. So nothing changes for me.

"I've got to be the leader of this team every night I step on the floor, I've got to command these guys and put them in the right positions to be successful and I've got to do it on both ends. If I do that, we've got a good chance."