{"id":567014,"date":"2026-01-28T20:36:18","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T20:36:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/567014\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T20:36:18","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T20:36:18","slug":"latest-on-star-franz-wagner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/567014\/","title":{"rendered":"Latest on star Franz Wagner"},"content":{"rendered":"

MIAMI \u2014 As the rest of the Magic<\/a> went through various shooting drills on the Kaseya Center<\/a> court Wednesday morning in South Florida, Orlando<\/a> star Franz Wagner<\/a> could only watch from behind the baseline as he rode a stationary exercise bike.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s all Wagner went through during the shootaround session in the morning prior to Orlando facing the Heat<\/a> for the first time on the road this season, according to Magic coach Jamahl Mosley<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s been on the bike,\u201d Mosley told the Orlando Sentinel when asked what Wagner was able to do at shootaround in Miami.<\/p>\n

Mosley added that Wagner was set to go through some standstill shooting after the completion of shootaround.<\/p>\n

None of the recent non-contact on-court work, however, indicates that Wagner is close to making his way back after he was ruled out of his fourth consecutive contest.<\/p>\n

Wagner previously missed 16 games due to a left high ankle sprain suffered Dec. 7 at New York. He returned for Orlando\u2019s pair of overseas contests against the Grizzlies, first in his hometown of Berlin and then in London.<\/p>\n

He played 27 minutes in his first game back and three days later saw 26 minutes of action. Then, according to Mosley<\/a>, Wagner came up \u201creally, really, really sore\u201d after a shootaround session last Thursday before Orlando hosted Charlotte at Kia Center.<\/p>\n

Wagner hasn\u2019t suffered a setback, the Sentinel learned Wednesday, and this time spent managing the lingering soreness from the original sprain is viewed as a continuation of his rehab.<\/p>\n

The Magic want Wagner to get his left ankle stronger and healthy again in order for him to be available for the final stretch of the regular season, a time in recent seasons when Orlando has gone on runs to solidify their postseason positioning.<\/p>\n

Last year, the team won 12 of its final 18 regular-season games in order to finish 41-41 and earn home-court advantage as the No. 7 seed in the East\u2019s Play-In Tournament. It went on to exit in the first round a second straight postseason after five games against No. 2 Boston.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not believed Wagner has undergone additional imaging on his left ankle during this current stretch of missed games, the Sentinel learned.<\/p>\n

Although time isn\u2019t on their side with the NBA\u2019s Feb. 5 trade deadline rapidly approaching and the regular season starting to wind down \u2014 No. 8 Orlando sat a game behind No. 7 Miami and only half a game in front of No. 9 Chicago entering Wednesday\u2019s slate of games \u2014 time might be the only cure for Wagner to recover properly.<\/p>\n

After facing the Heat, the Magic return home for a matchup against the Raptors before traveling again for their lone trip of the season to San Antonio on Sunday and defending champion Oklahoma City two days later.<\/p>\n

Heading into Wednesday\u2019s game, the Magic had gone 8-11 without Franz Wagner this season.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s great to try to look back and see what could or could not have happened,\u201d Mosley said about Wagner\u2019s rehab. \u201cBut those are things that you can no longer control. So, we\u2019re just really focusing on, what are we doing moving forward? And what do we need to do with him moving forward?<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that\u2019s being smart and thinking of the long-term view of what we can do to prevent anything else from happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jason Beede can be reached at jbeede@orlandosentinel.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Up next \u2026<\/p>\n

Magic vs. Raptors<\/p>\n

When: 7:30 p.m., Friday, Kia Center<\/p>\n

TV: ESPN, FanDuel Sports Network Florida<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIAMI \u2014 As the rest of the Magic went through various shooting drills on the Kaseya Center court…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":567015,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3779],"tags":[7,165,48,6,47,76,3883,1412,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-567014","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando-magic","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-latest-headlines","10":"tag-magic","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-orlando","13":"tag-orlando-magic","14":"tag-orlandomagic","15":"tag-social","16":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567014","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=567014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}