ORLANDO, Fla. — When the Orlando Magic and Cleveland Cavaliers meet up in the first round of the NBA playoffs starting Saturday, the matchup will feature two teams that in many ways are very much alike.

The Cavaliers just appear to be a year ahead of the Magic in their most recent rebuilds.

Cleveland is seeded No. 4 and has home-court advantage. Orlando is seeded No. 5.

The Cavs finished the regular season 48-34. The Magic went 47-35.

After LeBron James brought Cleveland a championship and left for a second time, the Cavs went through two 19-win seasons and a 22-win seasons, hired J.B. Bickerstaff as their coach and brought in a bunch of high young draft picks before they could finally win 44 games and then lose in two play-in games during the 2021-22 season. Then they made the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs last season, with a No. 4 seeding, but lost to the fifth-seeded New York Knicks 4-1.

After trading their fading playoff core of All-Star Nikola Vucevic, Aaron Gordon and Evan Fournier at the trade deadline in the 2020-21 season, the Magic finished with a 21-51 record. Then they hired Jamahl Mosley to replace Steve Clifford as their head coach and won 22 games the next season, won 34 games last season to come up six games short of the play-in and brought in many high young draft picks to restock their roster. Orlando is now in its first playoffs since the 2019-20 season.

Mosley and Bickerstaff both played college basketball and came up through the NBA assistant coaching ranks, though Bickerstaff had a few interim head coaching jobs and a short-term stint as the Memphis Grizzlies head coach before landing in Cleveland long term. They are friends, at least when their teams are not facing each other in NBA games.

During the regular season, the teams split the four-game series, with each team winning on the other’s home court once with rosters that were not entirely healthy for all the matchups.

Season series

• Dec. 6, 2023 (in Cleveland): Cleveland defeated Orlando 121-111. Paolo Banchero led Orlando in scoring with 42 points and Cole Anthony added 19. Cleveland’s Donovan Mitchell scored 35, and Darius Garland added 26 — with five Cavaliers in double-figure scoring.
• Dec. 11, 2023 (in Orlando): Orlando beat Cleveland 104-94. Five Magic players scored at least 12 points. Garland and Mitchell combined for 58 points, but Mitchell shot 33.3%.
• Jan. 22, 2024 (in Orlando): The Cavs routed the Magic 126-99. Six Cleveland players scored in double figures. Banchero and Wagner combined for 35 points on 25 total shots for Orlando. Isaac did not play.
• Feb. 22, 2024 (in Cleveland): The Magic won 116-109 as the bench came up big. Moe Wagner led Orlando in scoring with 22 points and grabbed seven rebounds, and Anthony had 13 points and six assists.

Both teams are big and base their success mostly on their defense.

Each team has an All-Star — Donovan Mitchell for Cleveland and Paolo Banchero for Orlando.

The series is likely to be a rock fight, with low-scoring, defensive games.

The difference is going to be which team makes the fewest mistakes, pays the closest attention to the details of the games and makes the best adjustments.

In their regular-season matchups, Cleveland hit more 3-pointers than Orlando but made more turnovers in all but one game.

However, regular-season matchups and playoff matchups between teams often look very different. The coaching staffs change up defensive coverages and offenses, make adjustments after they see what is most successful and often keep making changes just to keep the opponents from seeing much of the same action.

Cleveland has one major advantage — playoff experience. The Cavaliers’ series with the New York Knicks last year gave them time together facing the outside noise that comes along with the playoffs and the challenges of playing the same team in a long series, when opponents learn everything about each other.

Not only that, but Mitchell, Tristan Thompson, Georges Niang, Max Strus, Caris LeVert, Damian Jones and Marcus Morris each have multiple years of playoff experience, some with deep playoff runs. Orlando’s Joe Ingles and Gary Harris have significant playoff experience and Markelle Fultz and Jonathan Isaac have been in a few postseason games, but that is it for Magic players in the postseason.

After falling in five games to New York in last year’s series, Cleveland was determined to continue to improve. It spent the offseason adding the shooting it was missing the previous season to put around Mitchell and young big men Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley.

Cleveland’s additional year of growth and experience could make the difference in this series, unless Orlando continues to overachieve as it has all season.

5 Factors That Could Impact the Magic vs. Cavaliers NBA Playoff Series

1. The Magic fall behind big in the first quarter or get outscored big in the third quarter.

• In 20 of the Magic’s 35 losses in the regular season, they were blitzed by hot shooting, often one particular scorer, and outscored by at least 10 points in the first or third quarters.

2. The Cavaliers are able to establish a wall, without fouling, that keeps forwards Franz Wagner or Paolo Banchero out of the paint.

• In their four games against Cleveland, each of those players had one game when they shot less than 30%. If the other players, especially center Wendell Carter Jr., can hit 3-point shots early, it could loosen up the paint for Wagner and Banchero.

3. How the Magic incorporate Jonathan Isaac into the game and for how long

• Isaac is Orlando’s best defender and he can cover almost any position. If he gets into foul trouble, which he usually doesn’t do, or has to leave the game for another reason, that could be a problem. He did not play in either of the Magic’s regular-season losses to Cleveland.

4. Donovan Mitchell cannot be contained

• Mitchell has played in only 10 of a possible 26 games since the All-Star break because of a bone bruise and soreness in his left knee, but proclaimed himself as “100%” and “ready to go” as the Cavs practiced Wednesday. The All-Star guard averaged 27.3 points per game in the three games he played against Orlando. He did not play in Orlando’s 116-109 victory on Feb. 22. His lowest-scoring game in the series was 22 points, but point guard Darius Garland added 36 points. The Magic were able to win anyway after holding all but one other Cavalier to single-digit scoring. And when Mitchell wasn’t scoring, Garland was.

5. If Cleveland reserve guard Sam Merrill scores 26 points, that’s a bad sign.

• That’s exactly what happened in Cleveland’s 126-99 victory in Orlando on Jan. 22. Merrill averaged 8 points per game for the season. Mitchell also scored 25 points in that game.