German forward Franz Wagner hit his stride late to help the Orlando Magic rally for a 118-111 victory over the Memphis Grizzlies on Thursday in the first NBA regular-season game ever played in Germany.<\/p>\n
The Grizzlies did their best to spoil the return of Orlando’s Wagner brothers, Franz and Moritz, to their home country in the showcase game in Berlin.<\/p>\n
Memphis led by as many as 20 points in the first half before the Magic stepped it up on the defensive end to turn the tide.<\/p>\n
Orlando surrendered 39 points in the first quarter, but allowed Memphis just 40 in the next two periods combined, Franz Wagner pointing to Orlando’s 26-12 third quarter dominance as the difference-maker.<\/p>\n
Wagner called it “super-special” to have a chance to show his Magic teammates around Berlin, the city where he grew up.<\/p>\n
He said it wasn’t just the emotion of the trip that accounted for his slow start but also some rustiness as he returned from a 16-game absence with a high ankle sprain.<\/p>\n
“It was a lot coming into this week,” Wagner said of the extra media demands surrounding the historic game.<\/p>\n
“Obviously working back from an injury isn’t ever easy, and then it being this game, a very emotional week. Also a taxing week because we did a lot of stuff because we want to maximize our time here.<\/p>\n
“I’m not making any excuses, though. Once you decide to play you’ve got to be ready.<\/p>\n
“I was happy to make some plays at the end,” added Wagner, who scored 13 of his 18 points in the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n
Paolo Banchero led the Magic with 26 points and 13 rebounds. Anthony Black added 21 points, six rebounds and seven assists.<\/p>\n
Jaren Jackson Jr. led the Grizzlies with 30 points, but after a red-hot shooting start the Grizzlies connected on just 33.3% of their attempts from the field in the second half.<\/p>\n
Grizzlies star Ja Morant, recently the subject of trade rumors, was again sidelined with a calf injury but could take the floor when the two teams continue their European tour with a clash in London on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"German forward Franz Wagner hit his stride late to help the Orlando Magic rally for a 118-111 victory…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":539840,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3779],"tags":[22985,7,48,6,47,76,3883],"class_list":{"0":"post-539839","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando-magic","8":"tag-afp","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-magic","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-orlando","13":"tag-orlando-magic","14":"tag-orlandomagic"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115902781941765690","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539839","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=539839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/539840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}