LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — First it was Gian­nis Ante­tok­oun­m­po and the Bucks, unable to call upon what was one of the best defens­es in the league.

Then came LeBron James and the Lak­ers, clang­ing 3‑pointers off the rim to pro­vide a steady sound in a most­ly emp­ty gym.

These NBA play­offs already promised to be the most chal­leng­ing yet. They got a lit­tle tougher Tues­day for the league’s top teams.

Mil­wau­kee and Los Ange­les lost their play­off open­ers, the first time both con­fer­ence No. 1 seeds have been beat­en by the No. 8s to start their post­sea­sons since 2003.

So good for most of the sea­son, the top seeds are hav­ing trou­ble in the bubble.

There’s no home-court advan­tage to lose in this post­sea­son at Walt Dis­ney World, mak­ing it eas­i­er not to pan­ic in what would nor­mal­ly be a tougher predicament.

“No frus­tra­tion because the game is the game and we came in with a mind­set to win. We didn’t take care of busi­ness, but we’ve got anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty on Thurs­day to even the series and that’s my only mind­set,” James said.

The Lak­ers knew they were in against a tougher-than-usu­al No. 8 seed in the Port­land Trail Blaz­ers, who came back from the coro­n­avirus-caused sus­pen­sion of the sea­son healthy and then played their way into the post­sea­son by win­ning a play-in series.

Los Ange­les didn’t help itself in try­ing to slow down a hot oppo­nent by shoot­ing just 15.6% (5 for 32) from 3‑point range and wound up los­ing 100–93.

Milwaukee’s prob­lem was on the oth­er end. The Bucks sur­ren­dered three 30-point quar­ters — and 29 in its best peri­od — to the short-hand­ed Orlan­do Mag­ic in a 122–110 loss. That was an espe­cial­ly poor per­for­mance from a team that led the league in a num­ber of defen­sive cat­e­gories and held oppo­nents to a league-low 41.4 shoot­ing per­cent­age. Orlan­do made 49.4%.

“They played good. You’ve got to give that to Orlan­do and we’ve just got to keep doing what we’re doing and hope­ful­ly things in Game 2 can switch around,” Ante­tok­oun­m­po said. “But just keep play­ing hard, keep play­ing togeth­er. That’s all you can do.”

Nei­ther team can blame its MVP can­di­date. Ante­tok­oun­m­po had 31 points, 17 rebounds and sev­en assists. James had 23 points, 17 rebounds and 16 assists, the first 20–15-15 game in NBA play­off history.

But nei­ther team has looked par­tic­u­lar­ly sharp in Flori­da. They had arrived at the restart well ahead of their com­peti­tors for the No. 1 seeds and were focused more on stay­ing healthy than get­ting wins in the eight seed­ing games lead­ing into the playoffs.

They couldn’t turn things around when things became seri­ous and by the time the day was done it was the first time both No. 1s lost since Orlan­do knocked off Detroit in the East and Phoenix beat San Anto­nio out West in 2003.

The Spurs recov­ered to win that NBA title, just as the Toron­to Rap­tors did last year after falling to the Mag­ic in their open­er. The Lak­ers’ Dan­ny Green was on that team, so he wasn’t con­cerned about what either top-seed­ed squad faces now.

“It’s the same kind of sce­nario,” Green said. “Down 0–1, they’re down 0–1. They’re the top-seed­ed team for a rea­son, we’re the top-seed­ed team for a rea­son. We just have to dig down and find it, fig­ure it out. I believe we will.”