Back to work: Bucks one win away from second round

The Orlando Magic are going to be thrilled to see the Milwaukee Bucks take the floor on Saturday for Game 5 of their matchup.

And they’ll be even happier if they can face them again in a Game 6 on Monday.

The NBA playoffs — which stopped for three days after the Bucks refused to take the floor on Wednesday in protest of the shooting by police of Jacob Blake, a Black man, in Kenosha, Wisconsin this past weekend — are set to resume. The first game on the slate is Game 5 of the Orlando-Milwaukee Eastern Conference first-round series, with the Bucks holding a 3-1 lead and putting the Magic on the brink of elimination.

“We’re all united in this fight,” Magic coach Steve Clifford said Friday. “We support the Bucks and what they did. I think it’s ended up being a very positive thing. If you look at it, it was the impetus for the WNBA, for other teams in the NBA, for baseball … a bunch of college football teams, it was a positive occurrence. What they did kept the conversation going.”

Now, the Magic will aim to keep their season going. So will the Portland Trail Blazers.

A few days ago, the sky was falling on the Bucks and Los Angeles Lakers. The NBA’s two best teams in the regular season, the top seeds in their respective conferences, both lost their playoff openers and looked vulnerable.

Not so much now.

The Bucks and Lakers are a combined 6-0 since — winning those games by an average of 15.8 points — and like Milwaukee, the Lakers teams can reach the second round of the NBA playoffs with a win on Saturday at the Disney complex in Lake Buena Vista, Florida.

The other game in Saturday’s tripleheader is Game 5 between the Houston Rockets and Oklahoma City Thunder, that series knotted at two games apiece.

“Obviously, in Game 1, we were all disappointed in ourselves,” Milwaukee center Brook Lopez said Tuesday, on the eve of when Game 5 originally was to be played. “We felt we weren’t the team that we are and capable of being. Each and every game, our effort has been there since then. … The bottom line is we’ve come out and competed so much harder.”

The wake-up call helped the Lakers as well. They’ve had some of their best bubble showings since dropping Game 1, and now LeBron James has a chance to close out yet another series. James’ teams went 5-5 in his first 10 series-clinching opportunities; they’re 30-5 in those situations since.

“One thing about playing a team that’s desperate, they understand that if they lose, they go home,” James said earlier this week. “So, we’ve got to be just as desperate as they are.”