It’s the story that counts these days; there’s no other way to explain the inflation of sports documentaries. There will also be a documentary about the German basketball brothers Franz and Moritz Wagner; Dirk Nowitzki biographer Thomas Pletzinger has been following them since the World Cup in the Philippines last summer, when the German team surprisingly won the title. Pletzinger is currently working on the final part of the work, but its tone will certainly depend on how the playoffs of the NBA professional league and thus also the Wagner brothers’ season with the Orlando Magic turn out.
The section about game three of the first round of the playoffs could be titled “Offensive fireworks after two failures.” Orlando scored 121 points on Thursday evening at home after scoring 83 and 86 in the first two games. In the event of a defeat, the title could have been: “One more defeat and the Orlando Magic fail without a win.” Things happen so quickly in the NBA playoffs, one game can change the entire story.
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There will be a German duel in the playoffs. But while Maxi Kleber is convincing at the Dallas Mavericks and encouraging his coach to jump into the air, Daniel Theis from the Clippers hasn’t played a minute so far.
Of course Orlando wants to win the NBA title; But the protagonists know that this season might come too early for that. On the way, however, it would help if the team played as many tough playoff games as possible and gained experience and toughness that would be useful to them later. The intense series against Cleveland (and, if successful, another against New York or Philadelphia) is exactly what coach Jamahl Mosley currently wants for his team. “The intensity is different in the playoffs. I want us to experience it, learn from it and then compete,” said Mosley, who recently extended his contract until 2028 – another indication that they believe they are on the right path in Orlando. The development of game culture and identity is at least as important to Mosley as success in the present.
It is often said that Moritz is the wild one; Franz, on the other hand, is the thoughtful one
For a long time in the regular season, Orlando had hoped for a place in the top four and thus for home advantage in its first playoff participation since 2019. There were some signs of a duel against the New York Knicks, where German center Isaiah Hartenstein was having a fantastic season lays down. After the 114:125 defeat, the Knicks only lead 2:1 against the Philadelphia 76ers. Hartenstein has managed ten points and 7.5 rebounds per game in the playoffs so far. But Orlando ended up fifth, which meant it was against the Cavaliers, the first two games away from home in the US state of Ohio.
The Wagner brothers played in college for the University of Michigan, which is about as hated in Ohio as the Borussia Dortmund footballers are at Schalke. The first games became a deafening concert of boos and whistles whenever a Wagner touched the ball – the unanimous verdict afterwards: Fantastic how the two handled it, each in their own way.
“As children they each occupied their niche, today that is no longer necessary. Both are extremely emotional and smart in their own way,” said mother Beate. She has written a book about sons and the role of parents of talent. It’s called “Shining in Her Eyes” and it says that her boys are much more similar than expected. It is often said that Moritz is the wild and emotional one; Franz, on the other hand, is the thoughtful and strategic one. “I want to counteract this,” said mom.
What exactly that means could be seen in this third game against Cleveland. Of course, Franz is the great talent that Orlando chose eighth in the 2021 class in the hope that he would make the team a title contender in the medium term. Franz can not only score (17.3 points per playoff game so far) and look at the field like a chess player, but can also dish it out and take it. Again and again on Thursday he courageously moved to the basket, he probably collected more bruises than points (16) – but he did not do this blindly: Wagner sometimes had three opponents on him and still had an eye for his colleagues: Orlando scored 19 points according to Franz passes.
“Often making the right decision, the easy decision,” he called it. And just as Moritz often pulls his colleagues up with physical actions such as patting the shoulder, shaking or even tensing his muscles, Franz does it with words: “The boys scored phenomenally; there Of course it’s easy to collect assists.”
Moritz Wagner likes to take on opposing spectators
Moritz is the one who takes great pleasure in taking on opponents and opposing fans. In the first two games he did both and was kicked by a spectator – he draws energy from it. In the regular season, Moritz Wagner had best marks for points (10.8 per game) and hit rate (60.1 percent), as well as the fourth-most rebounds and sixth-most points of all NBA professionals who sit on the bench at the start of games. How he does this could also be seen in game three: He grabbed six rebounds not because he cleared opponents away, but because he positioned himself strategically. He has a “basketball IQ,” as the saying goes, and Moritz is currently showing that his is similar to his brother’s. So he is much more than just an emotional leader.
“Sometimes things don’t go the way you want. Sometimes the throws don’t fall,” said Franz about the two games at the beginning of the series: “Today they fell, sometimes against two opponents. But what’s important is that the intensity was also in the games The first games there, the mentality, the positive attitude, we have to take that with us for Saturday and the rest of the series.” This means: The story of this Magic season, that of the Wagner brothers, has not yet been told to the end.