Boston Celtics head coach Ime Udoka, left, talks with forward Jayson Tatum (0) after beating the Golden State Warriors in Game 3 of basketball's NBA Finals, Wednesday, June 8, 2022, in Boston. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)AP

BOSTON — The NBA Finals are all about adjustments. Some changes in strategy are obvious, like the Warriors decision to have Draymond Green primarily guard Jaylen Brown in Game 2. Others fall beneath the surface and are tougher to pick up.

Ime Udoka and Boston’s coaching staff had a number of options ready heading into Game 3 in response to Golden State’s Game 2 counters. They began by adjusting Boston’s rotation by limiting the time Al Horford and Rob Williams would spent on the floor together to start the first and third quarters, downsizing to Derrick White early in those periods. Udoka also ditched Daniel Theis minutes, wisely noting playing him as one of double bigs on the floor with Grant Williams was not a good matchup in this series.

However, Udoka did not ditch the double big lineup entirely in Game 3, he instead started leaning on different variations of it against Golden State. The head coach even went back to it heavily in the final 15 minutes of the game after the Warriors rallied from a 18-point deficit to briefly take the lead.

The decision to lean into the double big lineup with the game on the line over the final 15 minutes of Game 3 was not an obvious one. However, Boston’s coaching staff saw a vulnerability in the Warriors thanks to their other defensive tweaks and decided to go on the attack

The Warriors were one of the best defensive rebounding teams in the NBA during the regular season largely based on Draymond Green, Kevon Looney, Otto Porter Jr. and Nemanja Bjelica. None of those guys have great size but good positioning down low along with some gang rebounding from the wings helped Golden State keep opponents off the offensive glass.

The Warriors have been just a run-of-the-mill defensive rebounding team this postseason as they’ve elected to play smaller lineups. However, they have taken that smaller tactic to the extreme in the last two games against Boston with their switching and decision to take one of their best rebounders in Green and put him on a perimeter player in Jaylen Brown.

Elsewhere, Bjelica has been used sparingly compared to his regular season minutes, Porter Jr. is dealing with a foot injury that has him on a minutes limit and even Looney has seen a reduced role as the team has opted for more offensive minded players in his spot for spacing. This was clearly the case in Game 3 once the Celtics took a double digit lead early.

The Celtics clearly saw these tendencies after Game 2 and decided to go into overdrive on the offensive glass in Game 3 because of it, even leaning into bigger lineups as the game went on. The result? Boston had their best offensive rebounding game of the postseason (15) despite shooting a stellar 48 percent from the field.

“We feel like they’ve been killing us on the glass this whole series,” Rob Williams said after the win. “Wanted to just put an emphasis on it.”

The formula here is quite simple for Boston. The Celtics have a size advantage on almost every position on the court when they go with a double big lineup. The Warriors best rebounder (Green) is stuck trying to track Brown on the perimeter, away from the basket. That means there are a lot of undersized Warriors trying to protect the glass in a scrambling/switching defense and the Celtics attacked that relentlessly in Game 3.

Boston grabbed 37.5 percent of all offensive rebounds, their second-highest total of the entire season. Their 15 offensive rebounds lead to 22-second chance points, seven of which came during a game-changing 20-8 run midway through the second half that gave the Celtics the lead for good after the Warriors’ rally.

Both Grant Williams (3 offensive rebounds) and Rob Williams (3 offensive rebounds) were front and center for effort plays during that run but the strategy was clearly team-wide. Five different players had multiple offensive rebounds, relentlessly attacking from the perimeter against smaller Warriors defenders who failed to put a body on them.

The Celtics grabbed 46 percent of available misses on offensive rebounds when Rob and Grant Williams shared the floor.

How the Warriors respond to the soft spot of their smaller lineups created by their own tweaks will be fascinating. The team could try to pull Green off Brown but that leads to bigger defensive issues. Playing Looney more will help but Boston will be able to key in more on the Warriors’ shooters if they don’t have to worry about guarding him closely given his lack of scoring ability outside the paint. Bjelica is an option but he presents his own defensive vulnerabilities the Warriors can exploit.

The Celtics aren’t going to rebound this well every night but Udoka saw early on in the flow of the game that the Celtics were outworking the Warriors on the glass, which led to him leaning into bigger lineups late to regain control of the game and exploit the Warriors’ size created by sticking to their undersized lineups and past defensive tweaks. The adjustment has now put the Celtics two wins away from the championship and left the pressure on Steve Kerr to find a way to patch another hole in the Warriors boat that sprung a new leak in Game 3.

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