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
“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,” he added.<\/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 percent of their attempts from the field in the second half.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, the NBA champion Oklahoma City Thunder beat the Rockets 111-91 in Houston to push their league-best record to 35-7.<\/p>\n
NBA Most Valuable Player Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 20 points and center Chet Holmgren added 18 for Oklahoma City, who out-scored the Rockets 34-16 in the fourth quarter to put the game away.<\/p>\n
Jalen Williams scored just six points, but he handed out 10 assists without a turnover to help keep the Thunder offence firing.<\/p>\n
– Wemby leads Spurs –<\/p>\n
The San Antonio Spurs got a scare when Victor Wembanyama banged knees with Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo minutes into their clash and departed to the locker room.<\/p>\n
But the French star returned at the start of the second period and scored 22 points with 10 rebounds in a 119-101 Spurs victory.<\/p>\n
Stephon Castle added 19 points and 10 rebounds and six Spurs players scored in double figures.<\/p>\n
Antetokounmpo led the Bucks with 21 points, but he was the only Milwaukee starter to score in double figures and the Bucks lost their third straight.<\/p>\n
In Dallas, Klay Thompson moved into fourth place on the NBA’s all-time three-pointer list, draining six from beyond the arc on the way to 26 points in the Mavericks’ 144-122 victory over Utah.<\/p>\n
With 2,809 career three-pointers Thompson has passed Damian Lillard (2,804) for fourth on the list topped by Thompson’s former Golden State teammate Stephen Curry.<\/p>\n
Curry came into the night with 4,201 made three-pointers in his career. After going 0-for-4 from three-point range in a lackluster first half\u00a0he connected on four on the way to 27 points in a 128-113 victory over the New York Knicks.<\/p>\n
Jimmy Butler scored 32 points for Golden State, and Moses Moody added 21 with a sizzling seven three-pointers in nine attempts.<\/p>\n
OG Anunoby and Miles McBride scored 25 points apiece for the Knicks, who were without injured star Jalen Brunson.<\/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-540829","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\/115905508424621083","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540829","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=540829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540829\/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=540829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}