Berlin – It’s not as if you couldn’t have foreseen this moment. When the Orlando Magic play their first game of the season in the North American professional league NBA at the San Antonio Spurs on the night of Wednesday to Thursday, it is very likely that Franz Wagner’s name will also be heard for the first time from the loudspeakers in the glamor world of the best basketball league in the world be. At the young age of 20, the native of Berlin will have achieved what millions of children can only dream of. What they have trained for for years and in the end it is not enough because there are only around 500 places in the cadres of the 30 clubs per year.
Franz Wagner was able to get hold of one of them, on the draft evening, on which the 30 clubs from the pool of the greatest talents worldwide select the players who they believe will bring the club the greatest sporting value in the long term, from the Orlando Magic drawn. There, in Florida, where the NBA legend Shaquille O’Neil was able to take his first steps on the world’s largest basketball show stage, people believe in the highly talented winger from Berlin and pull him into eighth place. This is impressive in that, with Detlef Schrempf, only one German player has been drawn so early – even the great Dirk Nowitzki was once selected “only” in ninth position.
After his four years older brother Moritz, with whom he will form the first German pair of brothers in Orlando, another player, Franz Wagner, has made it into the NBA, who has completed training in the Alba Berlin youth program. In Prenzlauer Berg, he passed his Abitur at the age of 16 with a straight line and, by the way, replaced his brother as the youngest Alba player in a Bundesliga match of the professional team. His talent, his work ethic and a quick grasp had made him so good so early on and paved the way for the NBA. On Thursday night, the 20-year-old will take his next steps there.
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