How the Wagner brothers are helping to shape the Magic into a playoff contender

Moritz Wagner grinned, wide and wry. The Magic’s reserve center, who signed for two years and $16 million to stay with Orlando during free agency, declined to share how much he pays in monthly rent — only revealing his setup marks a “great deal” for one of the game’s better second-unit bigs.

To be fair, less than 50 minutes remained before Wagner took on the Brooklyn Nets inside Barclays Center. The query was a rather personal question. And yet Wagner, 26, explained that timing or privacy wasn’t exactly the predicament. He was claiming this dollar figure could only be provided by a particular someone.

“You gotta talk to the landlord about that,” Wagner said. “Property comments are not in my contract.”

The householder who collects Wagner’s monthly installments, the young man who leased him the upstairs of a newly purchased home in Central Florida, also happens to be a first-round pick out of Michigan and a member of the Magic, hailing from the same family in Berlin. Franz Wagner, nearly five years Mo’s junior and three years into an NBA career that seems directed toward All-Star games, holds the deed to their shared space. Franz commands the main floor of the home, but even he side-steps the question about his older sibling’s price point.

“We have a brotherly agreement,” was all Franz told Yahoo Sports. The virtues of this pact have been ensured by his tenant’s solid residency, beginning this summer and throughout this opening stretch of the 2023-24 season. “He’s been good so far,” Franz said. “Being the landlord is a newer role for me as well.”

Do we have a new NBA nickname? You can’t say Franz, a 6-foot-9 swingman, owns the arenas or a particular area of any court he takes. But the 22-year-old boasts the deep toolkit necessary to solve any problem teams pose on hardwood, whether he’s helping steer Germany to the gold medal — along with Mo — during September’s FIBA World Cup final in Manila, or on the gaudy floors throughout the NBA’s inaugural in-season tournament.

He’s back to posting 18.4 points per game with Orlando, with 5.5 rebounds and 3 assists. The younger Wagner finishes his galloping dribble with the shifty footwork of speedy guards, either hand spinning scoops off the backboard that flirt with being labeled as skyhooks. His knees nearly touch when he gathers his jumper in a wide stance, that all bills just as fluid off the bounce as off the catch. Lose sight of the supersized ball-handler when the rock isn’t between his fingers and he’ll carve your sleeping defense. In transition, he’s liable to drop a vicious hammer on top of the coming contest.

His older brother, nearly 7-feet tall, holds a true timeshare in the lane. When Mo’s not stretching the floor with a career-best 36.4% clip from beyond the arc, he turns handoff actions or post touches into bruising downhill assaults on the basket. He sets crushing screens, often staggering and delaying the timing on his rolls to help Magic guards confuse and cajole. When he finishes with authority, Mo is prone to barking at the bench — preferring to hype his own — before snarling his way back down the court. He’s averaging 11.6 points, another career high, in 19.3 minutes off the bench.

Together, the Wagners are two cogs in Orlando’s wheel, churning its way into postseason positioning under head coach Jamahl Mosley and currently 9-5, tied for fourth in the Eastern Conference. The Magic finished 14 games below .500 last season, but capped 2022-23 with a 29-28 record over the team’s last 57 games after a 5-20 start. And then Franz and Mo flocked to Southeast Asia with the German national team, experiencing how a group can truly foster a collective sum that's stronger than its parts.

“It was purely about, how can we all come together and do something that’s greater than each individual by themselves?” Franz said. “I think we’re creating that same vibe here in Orlando.”

“That breeds into the goal we’re building,” Mosley said. “How to win.”

These Magic sure have the swagger of a winner. With reigning Rookie of the Year Paolo Banchero and a cast of other first-round picks filling Mosley’s rotation, they blasted the Rockets by 30 on opening night. Orlando showed the impressive punch of a veteran boxer when it visited Indiana last week, maintaining a 30-point cushion throughout a methodic third quarter against another blooming playoff contender in the East. The locker room appears close-knit and confident. Even after a tough loss in Brooklyn, players buzzed over highlights on Banchero’s phone from around the league’s night of games.

The Wagner brothers are relishing this time alongside one another, their first extended stretch of winning in the NBA during either of their careers. These two-plus seasons in Orlando have also brought their first period ever playing on the same team, at any level, after a long period living apart. Six years, the latter half of the last decade, left the Wagners separated once Mo set foot on campus in Ann Arbor in 2015 and left for the NBA before Franz followed in his footsteps at Michigan. They wouldn’t reunite until Orlando, beginning with the 2021-22 campaign.

“We know how unique this is,” said Mo, whose locker sits next to his little brother’s. “We’re embracing it as a family.”

Their respective games offer refined versions of childhood one-on-one in Berlin, an aggressive, brash teenager brutalizing the smaller, craftier adolescent. “No mercy,” Mo said of their former battles, “and then once you realize he can win, you don’t play anymore.” Both were sorer than sore losers. Franz would kick balls into neighboring bushes in defeat. The flames Mo breathes on the court have been there since the beginning. Sparring eventually caused too much trouble to be worth a match. So their rivalry stopped, and the brothers emerged as allies occupying different sides of the same continuum. Where Franz packs power on top of all his finesse, Mo sprinkles a dexterity within his brute force.

Their personalities are of equal contrast, albeit with similar mannerisms and tendencies that spooked Wolverines teammates when Franz first joined Michigan. How they talked to the referees and their body language when trying to sell fouls were nearly identical. “Just because he’s quieter than me, doesn’t mean he’s shy,” Mo said. He’s just listening and observing. He could always watch Mo push the boundaries and assess which successes to mimic. “He kind of gave me a blueprint,” said Franz, “and some of the stuff I didn’t want to do.”

Their parents, Beate and Axel, both stand over 6-feet tall, setting an example of boisterous discussion over the dinner table and “wherever, whenever, everyone was always on their bulls***,” Mo told Yahoo Sports. “I think [Franz] looked at our family, and we’re all very emotional and big and loud, and then he looked at us and said, ‘I don’t want to be like that. I want to find my own niche.’”

You can hear it quite easily. Franz speaks with a far milder charm. Big brother’s voice booms with a brightness. Mo’s contemplative, too, but even he’ll admit a tendency to ramble before much thinking, a breathy chuckle never too far behind. “Mo’s a presence when he walks into a room,” said Franz.

The older Wagner still relishes strolling the campus in Ann Arbor, where his impassioned play turned him into a first-round pick who pushed Michigan to the Final Four and the national title game against Villanova. To be sure, Franz holds the superior talent in most objective lenses. “I can't tell him how to be an All-Star,” said Mo, “I wouldn’t know.” But the elder sibling seems built for the spotlight. He outpaces his kid brother’s Instagram following by 60,000. Mo is loose and comfortable, dripping with zeal that stretches beyond the sport. When he strolled back to his locker following warmups for the Nets, he slunk into the leather chair, crossed a leg in his lap and ran a hand through his golden curls like he was about to spark a cigarette and tell a winding story. His has seen far more bumps and bruises along the way.

Mo was traded to the Wizards after his rookie season in Los Angeles, a rollercoaster campaign that was LeBron James’ first with the Lakers. After a year with Washington, which was sliced in half by the pandemic, he was dealt to Boston before the trade deadline in a truncated 2020-21 season and waived by the Celtics that April following nine games. Wagner never imagined he’d be out of the league so soon after entering the NBA as a top prospect. This was different from being traded. “You really do feel like you’ve been given up on,” Mo said.

It took him two days to gather himself, and then without a clear direction, Wagner flew back to Ann Arbor. He hung out with Franz, who had helped bring Big Blue to the Elite 8 of that spring’s NCAA tournament. He trained three and even four times a day with a dear friend named Harry Rafferty, part of the women’s basketball team’s coaching staff. “I didn’t really have anything else to do,” Mo said, “and that’s kind of how you get that feeling off your chest.” The training only lasted a week before Wagner got the call. Orlando was scooping him for the final few games of the season.

He started 10 of 11 outings, and then his contract concluded. Mo went to Tokyo to compete with Germany in the delayed 2020 Olympics. So when Franz entered the Magic facilities for a pre-draft workout, he focused on showcasing his personality and work habits. There was no vision of sharing an NBA facility with his big brother. He doesn’t know if he believes in fate.

Jeff Weltman’s front office identified how the younger Wagner processed basketball, a brilliance that struck Wolverines coaches throughout his two seasons under Juwan Howard. “The first time that you’re with him, you get the idea, he just has this basketball IQ,” Michigan assistant Phil Martelli said. “It’s cute and quaint to use the word ‘savant,’ but that’s what he is.” And when Franz went through Orlando’s routine shooting gauntlet, 100 shots moving all around the floor, his jumper was more impressive than any other prospect who came through the facility that summer. “He didn’t miss,” said Darrel Jordan, then a member of the coaching staff. “He didn’t miss.”

The Magic landed Franz with the eighth pick, and Mo signed back on board. After all this time away, Mo found himself taken by the professional and person his little brother had become. Orlando coaches say Franz thinks the sport like certain Hall of Fame players they’ve trained. In film sessions, Franz will call out what he should have done on that possession, or even the positive reason assistant coach Bret Brielmaier clipped a particular sequence, as the screen changes, before even rolling the tape. “The worst thing would be to look back and think I didn’t get the most out of myself,” Franz said.

Mo’s lowpoint, lingering outside the league, has actually provided a newfound lightness. Somewhere in that empty Ann Arbor practice gym, he cast away his angst about the business and reconnected with his fire for the game. “You have room for development in your own directions,” Mo said.

When they return home from the facility, the Wagners crawl back into their respective corners of the place. They share an evident grasp on the boundaries as much as the benefits of their proximity.

They reconvene over the kitchen counter before it’s time to leave. While two cars are parked in the garage, they have a daily race to determine which brother is tasked with driving that day’s leg of their ongoing carpool. Not a race on foot, but whichever brother asks, “Who’s driving?” first doesn't have to get behind the wheel to work. If you snooze, you lose and have to grab your own set of keys. Apparently Franz drives at a sleepy pace whenever he’s stuck with the job.

“He’s just so slow, it’s unbelievable,” Mo said.

“At least I’ve never damaged my car,” said Franz.