Anyone who saw Franz Wagner at that moment knew it was over. Nobody who is going to win is in the same position as the German professional basketball player two minutes before the end of his Orlando Magic’s game at the Cleveland Cavaliers. Whoever will win moves like opponent Donovan Mitchell. He pounded his chest with his fist and then waved his arms wildly as a sign to the audience: That’s it!
Wagner, on the other hand, supported himself on his knees, he gasped for air, the bruises on his shoulders and upper arms could not be overlooked, his eyes seemed empty. He sent the same message as Mitchell, only from the perspective of one who knows nothing more will happen: That was it, and shortly afterwards that was it – the game, the first round play-off series, the season for the Orlando Magic. “It really hurts,” he said a few minutes later in the hall’s catacombs.
Playoffs are a matter of the mind
Of course, assessing sporting events afterwards is always easier – especially in the sport of basketball, known as the “Game of Runs”, in which the combination of your own run with the opponent’s shaky hand crisis can completely turn a game around within a few minutes. You don’t need a degree in sports psychology to explain how Cleveland, led by Mitchell, hardened by 50 playoff games and cheered on by a fanatical Cleveland crowd, kept calm despite being 17 points down, slowly worked their way back, and then suddenly It seemed as if they couldn’t make a bad pass or throw.
And why Magic, their five regular players in total had less playoff experience (44 games) than Mitchell alone, suddenly it seemed as if they had never played professional basketball: passes to nowhere, wild throws with no chance of success, almost grotesque turnovers. It may sound banal – but it’s only because it’s true: basketball playoffs are a matter of the mind.
In the end it was 106:94 for Cleveland, and while the Magic players shuffled to the locker room with their heads hanging, Mitchell (39 points) was allowed to say: “We always believed in ourselves.” There are plenty of pictures of Mitchell looking like Wagner did on Sunday; he was just accused of getting shaky hands in crucial moments of crucial games during his time with the Utah Jazz (2017-22). The much more exciting question is why it could be a positive experience for Wagner in the medium term that he only hit one of 15 attempts in this game and already knew two minutes before the end: That was it! Colleagues Paolo Banchero (38 points, but only 14 in the second half) and Jalen Suggs (two of 13 attempts) were equally dismayed.
That this moment, this game and this series will at some point be seen as: the emergence of a title candidate.
The heavier, the better
The young team from Orlando – average age: 24.3 – had earned a seventh game, for the first time in the careers of the young stars Banchero (21 years old), Franz Wagner and Suggs (both 22 years old). “It won’t be easy, but we don’t want it to be easy – the harder it is, the better we’ll be,” Magic coach Jamahl Mosley said before the game. His team had won 47 games in the regular season, just one less than Cleveland, but that made this matchup all the more difficult for Orlando.
Both teams had won all three home games, which is why the Americans came to what they did two most beautiful words in professional sports call: game seven! A deciding game for a place in the second round against the Boston Celtics; the team with clearly the best record (64:18) of the NBA season. “Game seven, away: The boys are looking forward to it,” said Mosley, who is known for preferring development to short-term success: “We can grow from that, we can learn from that.”
So then, game seven, the conundrum in Orlando, besides dealing with the infernal noise, was: How do you stop Mitchell, who had scored 50 points in game six and all 18 of his team’s points in the final quarter? Should you, and this question has been around since the Michael Jordan era, attack Mitchell with two or three opponents – but leave his teammates unguarded? Or should you close all the pass routes and thus ask Mitchell: Okay, then try to fix it on your own! There is no good and badthere is only judgment afterwards worked or did not work.
Mosley tried the youth football coach tactic: He assigned Suggs to follow Mitchell everywhere, even to the toilet if necessary. That worked – until it not more worked. One can blame Mosley for not offering an alternative when it no longer worked. That he hoped too much on offense that one of his three young stars would score again. That he left the experienced Joe Ingles (57 playoff games), who is often accurate in these moments, or his emotional leader Moritz Wagner on the bench during the crisis.
A thought: Mosley, who recently extended his contract until 2028, deliberately left his young players on the floor, with it they have this experience – either as “Look, we can win game seven in a strange hall” or “This is what it feels like when you lose game seven”. Mosley wants to form a title contender, with Banchero, Wagner and Suggs at center; And anyone who knows the careers of the biggest winners in this sport knows that it was the bitter defeats for Jordan (1990 against the Detroit Pistons) or James (the 2011 final series against Dirk Nowitzki’s Dallas Mavericks) that made them so Growing champions.
“I learned how mental this game is, what ups and downs there can be in a series; how you can still lose away from home,” said Wagner afterwards: “It’s bad that a season ends like this, it really hurts ; I feel like I’ve let my team down a bit.” He seemed sad, sure, but his look said something else. Anyone who saw him at that moment, in the catacombs after the defeat in game seven, knew: That was it. Wagner will do just about anything to never have to experience that again.