“It’s really surreal. Driving through the streets here in the team bus and all that – that’s really cool,” said Moritz Wagner happily on the sidelines of a training session before his Orlando Magic’s NBA game against the Memphis Grizzlies in Berlin.
Wagner is one of three German basketball professionals from the Magic who will take part in the first regular NBA game on German soil. The other two are Moritz’s younger brother Franz Wagner and Tristan Da Silva.
The NBA (National Basketball Association) is the North American professional basketball league and is considered the best basketball league in the world. It has been organizing regular games abroad for years to excite local fans and open up new markets. Now it’s Germany’s turn for the first time. Although there have been pre-season games on German soil before, there has never been a regular season game.
It’s a special game especially for the Wagner brothers. You were born and raised in Berlin and learned to play basketball here.
“The game is actually not that important,” said Moritz Wagner. “Being here, driving around town, seeing our friends and connecting our two worlds means the world to me.”
Role model for the next generation
However, the Wagner brothers are not only visiting home for fun and family reunions, but are also hoping that their guest appearance in Berlin will have positive effects for German basketball.
“The goal of this trip is to bring this a little closer to everyone who lives in Germany and Berlin. The NBA world used to feel far away,” said Franz Wagner. “It is Moritz’s and my goal to make this path appear a little clearer for the next generation.”
“Franz and I feel very grateful that we can be part of a wave of young German players who have achieved something in sport,” said his big brother Moritz. “It’s something very special for an athlete when you realize that there is an effect that goes beyond the individual.”
World and European champions
Moritz Wagner has been playing in the NBA since 2018. The Magic, for whom he has been playing since 2021, are already his fourth team. Brother Franz was also selected number nine by the Magic in the 2021 draft. After his first three years as a professional, the club extended his contract – five years for a guaranteed $224 million.
Both brothers were part of the German national team, which, led by Dennis Schröder, sensationally became world champions in 2023. Moritz Wagner missed winning the 2025 European Championship due to injury, but Franz Wagner and Tristan Da Silva were part of the team.
Tuomas Iisalo – Child of the Bundesliga in the NBA
In addition to the Wagner brothers and Da Silva, the coach of the Memphis Grizzlies also has a connection to Germany. The Finn Tuomas Iisalo was Bundesliga coach in Crailsheim (2016-2021) and Bonn (2021-2023) for seven years. Then we went to the NBA via Paris Basketball.
The 43-year-old still knows Berlin from his early childhood. Iisalo’s father worked as a correspondent for a Finnish newspaper in East Berlin in the 1980s.
Iisalo remembers that he lived with his family “on the Spree” back then, but he was very small. “We went back before I turned five. The memories have faded.”
The NBA’s European offensive – Germany in focus
In order to reach as many fans in Germany as possible, the NBA’s marketing machinery is in full swing. When they arrived, all Magic professionals paraded past the waiting photographers with small German flags.
They posed in front of the Brandenburg Gate, met with German NBA legend Dirk Nowitzki and much more – all well documented on the league and club’s social media channels.
There, the Wagners’ non-German teammates were also allowed to try out German sweets such as gummy bears and were asked to pronounce complicated German terms such as “Ruetscheentchen” or “Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaft”.
Despite all the Wagner Berlin nostalgia, marketing is the NBA’s main concern for its first league game in Germany. Similar to how the National Football League (NFL) has been organizing games in Germany for years, the German basketball market is now also to be developed. Three days after the “Berlin Game,” the Magic and Grizzlies will play another game in London.
“I don’t believe that European basketball reaches the diverse and large global audience that it could reach and that the NBA does,” said George Aivazoglou, managing director of NBA Europe. The NBA’s European business unit is based in London and is responsible for representing and growing the NBA brand in Europe.
The NBA also wants to gain a permanent foothold in Europe and install its own league under its roof as an NBA branch on the European continent. NBA Europe is scheduled to be founded in October 2027 in collaboration with the world basketball association FIBA. Intensive discussions will begin this week with interested parties who want to field a team in the league.
“This includes investors and teams. Some of these teams are existing basketball teams, others are soccer teams that are very interested in building a basketball program as part of NBA Europe,” explained Aivazoglou.
From Germany, ALBA Berlin and FC Bayern Munich are considered candidates, and Borussia Dortmund is also being traded. However, a conflict over dominance of the European basketball market with the EuroLeague, the previous market leader, seems inevitable.
Aivazoglou believes that basketball will catch up with football in terms of fan interest in Europe. “It’s the second most popular team sport,” he said. Basketball is also growing faster than football.
Huge interest, high prices
In any case, there is great interest in the NBA and the return of the Wagner brothers to Berlin. Hundreds of thousands have registered in order to have the opportunity to get a ticket. However, there are only around 17,000 seats in the hall, so the vast majority of those interested came away empty-handed.
Many have also been put off by the high prices that you have to pay to take part. The day before the game there were still a few tickets left – depending on the proximity to the field, they cost between 253 and 1115 euros.
The Wagner brothers themselves bought between 150 and 200 tickets. If they have the opportunity to play in their hometown, then as many of their family members and friends as possible should be there too.
“For me, this is probably one of the coolest things I will experience in my career,” said Moritz Wagner: “It means a lot for us, our family and friends.”
