{"id":443832,"date":"2025-11-30T07:08:42","date_gmt":"2025-11-30T07:08:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/443832\/"},"modified":"2025-11-30T07:08:42","modified_gmt":"2025-11-30T07:08:42","slug":"wagner-brothers-are-teammates-roommates-and-best-friends-living-out-their-nba-dream-with-the-magic-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/443832\/","title":{"rendered":"Wagner brothers are teammates, roommates and best friends living out their NBA dream with the Magic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Franz Wagner fell in love with basketball as a kid in Germany when he went with his older brother, Moritz, to watch an under-19 game in Berlin.<\/p>\n

The Wagner brothers hadn\u2019t even thought about playing professionally at that point. Local hoops was their first exposure to the sport and they were hooked.<\/p>\n

Fellow German Dirk Nowitzki became their connection to the NBA. Watching documentaries on Dwyane Wade and Kevin Garnett got their attention.<\/p>\n

Now they\u2019re in their fifth season as teammates on the Orlando Magic.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember our grandparents built a little basket in front of the house, and we would always play no matter the weather,\u201d Moe Wagner said. \u201cAnd then I think Franz got a LeBron James Cavaliers jersey for Christmas, and I got a Kevin Garnett jersey, one of those nonauthentic fake jerseys. And I wore them to every practice. I wanted to wear the gear. I wanted to be part of that lifestyle and that is when we started watching YouTube videos and games and we kind of became obsessed with that idea of maybe wanting to do that ourselves as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Playing basketball came easier for the Wagners than soccer or other sports.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the start, especially growing up in Germany, it was just purely (playing for) the fun of it,\u201d Franz said. \u201cHaving those moments in practice where stuff is making sense, maybe more sense than in other sports that we\u2019ve played prior, and then once we got kind of wind of the NBA and how big of a platform that is and how big of a production, I think that\u2019s when the wheel started turning pretty quickly for both of us that the dream of playing there one day and going to America even and just seeing their culture, I think that kind of started a little bit later.\u201d <\/p>\n

There are 13 sets of brothers currently playing in the NBA, including Giannis, Thanasis and Alex Antetokounmpo on the Milwaukee Bucks. It\u2019ll be 14 when Seth Curry is signed. He\u2019s expected to eventually join Stephen on the Golden State Warriors.<\/p>\n

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The Wagners are four years apart and never played on a team together at any level until the NBA. Moe Wagner was drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers with the 25th pick in the 2018 draft. The 28-year-old, 6-foot-11 center bounced around from Los Angeles to Washington to Boston before the Magic signed him in April 2021.<\/p>\n

Franz, who followed his brother to Michigan, was selected by Orlando with the eighth pick in the 2021 draft. The 24-year-old 6-10 forward is a top player, averaging 22.9 points and 6.4 rebounds per game. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy situation was a lot different than Franz,\u201d Moe said. \u201cHe was freshly drafted. I had just gotten waived the year before. So that was a challenge, which in retrospect, I actually really enjoyed having a brother with me, even though it was kind of a challenge because he obviously, when the organization drafts a player, they put everything into him. And you\u2019re like, look at your younger brother. It\u2019s like, damn, I wish I had that opportunity, but at the same time, you\u2019re super happy. And in retrospect it actually helped me to define myself as a player a little bit as well, and I\u2019m very grateful for the opportunity.\u201d <\/p>\n

The Wagners are not only teammates but they also live together.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI think it was a no-brainer for both of us to live together because we missed some valuable time when he went to college, and just because of basketball, obviously, being super busy,\u201d Franz said. \u201cSo we\u2019re super happy to get some of that time back. But at the same time, we\u2019re also working together. So that dynamic is a little bit different. You\u2019ve got to make sure you don\u2019t bring the frustration sometimes from work home. And then we\u2019re also adults now. So, I think our relationship has changed a great deal in a positive way in the last couple of years.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I think that took us one or two years to kind of figure out how to talk to each other in a working environment, figuring out this is the face that he\u2019s making when he\u2019s mad and maybe you leave him alone for a second and vice versa for other stuff. I think it\u2019s just been a great experience just to get to know each other as adults on a really close level, which I think other siblings don\u2019t have that opportunity, especially in this type of work.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Franz plays a big role along with Paolo Banchero, Desmond Bane and Jalen Suggs for a Magic team expected to contend in the Eastern Conference, Moe Wagner is still recovering from a torn ACL sustained on Dec. 21, 2024. He was playing some of his best basketball at the time of the injury and was in the final year of his contract. Despite the injury and lengthy rehab, the Magic signed him to a one-year, $5 million deal in July.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to get this all the way right,\u201d Moe said. \u201cI don\u2019t expect anything to change, other than play winning basketball.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps he\u2019ll be back before the Magic and Memphis Grizzlies play a game in Berlin on Jan. 15.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is probably one of the coolest things that I will ever experience in my career,\u201d Moe said. \u201cI\u2019ll speak for myself and Franz here because I know that he doesn\u2019t ever express it the way that I do, but that\u2019s very meaningful for us. Our family, our friends, people that we weren\u2019t able to take on this journey with us to America, get a chance to see us play. Family members get a chance to see us play. That means a lot. We grew up in that gym. We grew up with that club. So, to have this opportunity, to have the league and the Magic figure this out is very meaningful to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP NBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nba<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Franz Wagner fell in love with basketball as a kid in Germany when he went with his older…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443833,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3779],"tags":[53974,7,497,1105,583,420,403,461,3064,185,61753,48,6,446,47,76,3883,402,10133,66,22566],"class_list":{"0":"post-443832","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando-magic","8":"tag-alex-antetokounmpo","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-desmond-bane","11":"tag-dirk-nowitzki","12":"tag-fl-state-wire","13":"tag-florida","14":"tag-franz-wagner","15":"tag-jalen-suggs","16":"tag-kevin-garnett","17":"tag-lebron-james","18":"tag-local-news-for-apple","19":"tag-magic","20":"tag-nba","21":"tag-nba-basketball","22":"tag-orlando","23":"tag-orlando-magic","24":"tag-orlandomagic","25":"tag-paolo-banchero","26":"tag-seth-curry","27":"tag-sports","28":"tag-sports-europe"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115637394190663195","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}