Franz Wagner stewed on Game 7 to be ready for another breakout year

The Orlando Magic had to be a little shell-shocked as they walked off the floor at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse last May.

A season of celebration and joy ended instantly and painfully. A team that was rolling up 17 points in the first half was suddenly blitzed and got tight. Players admitted in hindsight that they relaxed with that big lead and could not rediscover the spark that nearly pushed them to the second round. But in that moment it was a daze.

Having to face the media immediately after that game, everyone was not quite ready to reflect. Coach Jamahl Mosley immediately defended his players, particularly his young star in Franz Wagner.

He had a game to forget, making only 1 of his 15 shots in the defeat. That would be a stat line that would haunt him throughout his offseason as questions about his struggling shot followed him even to the Olympics in Paris.

After the game, Wagner could only sit there and say: "I expect a lot more from myself. It sucks to end the season like this. I feel like I let my team down a little bit."

Wagner had to come out this season and make sure that performance did not define him in his young career. He had to sit and wait in the offseason and stew over the loss. Moe Wagner said he and his brother needed a few weeks to process that loss. But then he had to get to work to improve.

With a competitor like Franz Wagner, that can be a very dangerous thing.

"Obviously super frustrated. You could see that," Franz Wagner said at media day. "But those are moments you have to go through as a player and a person. That's part of life. It's not always going to go break. The weeks after that, I took a long time for myself to reflect on the experience and especially on that game and what went wrong and what I have to improve on. That's what I spent my summer working on."

Wagner had a stellar season and playoffs last year. He averaged 19.7 points per game and shot 48.2 percent from the floor. He followed that up in the playoffs with 18.9 points per game including 34 points in Game 4 and 26 points in Game 6.

Wagner's biggest struggle was his shooting. His 3-point shooting fell to 28.1 percent during the regular season and 26.5 percent in the playoffs. Rounding his shot into form is vital to his development.

The whole team needed to show added maturity and growth from their first playoff experience. But nobody seemed to need to take that next step quite like Wagner. Nobody had to respond to Game 7 like Wagner did.

"Franz being one of the most competitive people I have been around and one of the highest basketball IQs I have been around, he's able to grasp moments and reflect on whatever it was good or bad and grow from it," coach Jamahl Mosley said at media day. "The great part about him is he is going to continue to trust the process of what he's able to do and what he means to this team. He put in the body of work this summer to continue to grow, continue to get better and continue to push our guys as well as himself to be better. it's constant encouragement of who he is and what he means to this team."

There was no doubt Wagner would come back with a vengeance this season.

A strong but uneven response

It has been an uneven start for Franz Wagner to the season thanks to the illness that limited him to 11 minutes in the win over the Indiana Pacers on Monday and 23 minutes in the loss to the Chicago Bulls on Wednesday. Wagner is still averaging 17.8 points per game and 3.4 assists per game.

More importantly, his shooting has vastly improved. He is shooting 33 for 64 (51.6 percent) overall and 11 for 28 (39.3 percent).

He scored at least 23 points in the Orlando Magic's first three games before the illness slowed him down, including 29 points in the Magic's win over the Brooklyn Nets.

It is still far too early in the season to draw conclusions, but this is very promising and a sign that Wagner, of course, took his work this offseason seriously.

"I think get better individually obviously. And then try to grow into a leadership role," Wagner said at media day. "Take responsibility not just for what I do but what we do as a team as well. I think that's always easier to come up with cool goals. You only get it if you focus on the right stuff.

"[I worked on] obviously a lot on my shot. Get the mechanics right and my mindset too. I think that's where it starts coming in with the right mentality and just having a clear mind and knowing what I want to accomplish and what the team's intentions are. That's when I am at my best."

Wagner's shot form is noticeably different. It is less of a push shot and more like a traditional up-and-down release. It has worked for him so far. But there is still a lot of season left. And bigger moments ahead.

A playoff launching pad

One of those bigger moments will come Friday when the Orlando Magic return to Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse for the first time. The Orlando Magic are returning to the scene of their greatest collective trauma to face an emboldened Cleveland Cavaliers team that is now 5-0.

The team exited that playoff series optimistic about their future. It was not a turning point for the Magic, it was a launching pad.

That is how this young team needed to view that moment. That is how Wagner needed to view that moment as a chance to keep growing.

"I think one, it's figuring out as a team where we want to get to in those situations," Wagner said during media day. "It's not a one-man job or the person with the ball. At the end of the day, it's a team sport and we have to figure that stuff out. And then it's on individual players to get better in those situations."

Wagner has taken a step up it would appear this year. He used his offseason to improve his playmaking and creation. He used it to improve his shooting. Wagner used that Game 7 defeat to build his future.

Of course, nobody really knows for sure until the team is back in that pressure cooker of the playoffs. A game like Friday's nationally televised return to Cleveland is a litmus test of sorts. But the Magic are waiting for their return to the playoffs to see just how much they have learned.

Clearly as a team, there are still things to learn after Wednesday's loss to the Bulls. The Magic said they wanted to take every game more seriously and that was a loss that showed there is still room for the team to grow.

The team certainly felt Wagner's absence as he tries to get better from this lingering illness. But Orlando knows it will have a better version of Wagner the next time they are in that must-win situation.

The Magic never wanted Wagner to change.

"He just has to continue to be who he is," Mosley said during media day. "What he has done is enough. And he is going to grow into more playmaking, more shooting, more driving, more attacking, more making his teammates around him better. I think that's what we're asking of him."

Wagner took a big step last year even as he got criticized for his struggles. This season he has seemingly taken another step, at least to restore his shooting.

The frustration of Game 7 has given way to the determination of a new season. Time will tell just how much he grows.