Hidden Magic: Franz Wagner Reveals Key to Improvement

Magic small forward Franz Wagner revealed the secret to the best season of his career and how he's working to become more like players such as Luka Dončić.

The Orlando Magic have enjoyed drastic improvement as a team this season thanks in part to a career year for Franz Wagner and his production. 

Recently, Wagner sat down on JJ. Redick's podcast, The Old Man and the Three, and revealed how he's been able to grow so much on the court.

Magic small forward Franz Wagner revealed the keys to his offensive development in an interview with JJ Redick / Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

"I've gotten away from watching the last game I played the next day. But I watch a lot of the other players," Wagner said. "It's like Luka, how does he slow down in the paint? How does he get to two feet all the time? Shai, how's he changing his pace? Jimmy, how is he creating contact? How is he getting to the line 18 times in a game? -Those little things, that's what I try to look at, and then I try to look at my stuff. Second Spectrum is a great thing where you can kind of type in everything, and I can see how I do in a similar situation. "

To those unfamiliar, Second Spectrum tracks athletes' eyes and helps them hone in when studying film for areas to improve.

"Our player tracking system applies state-of-the-art machine learning and computer vision techniques to produce fast and accurate location data for basketball," Second Spectrum claims.

Studying film differently has helped Wagner increase his per-game stats in points (20.9), rebounds (5.9), and assists (3.9), all of which would be single-season career bests.

Wagner also revealed specific areas of his game that he's been making an effort to improve in his third NBA season.

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"I would say one thing I'm focusing on this year is getting slower as I'm getting closer to the basket, the decelerations, the different ways to do it," Wagner said. "Getting more shots really close to the rim and eliminating those like short or long mid-rangers, and I think part of that is pick and rolls slowing down, sometimes putting people in jail or, if somebody's still in front of me on the side, finding more contact instead of just trying to get around people. Looking at stuff like that."

So far this season, Wagner's development has helped the Magic elevate its win percentage from 42 percent a season ago to 54 percent this year. If he and the rest of Orlando's young team continue to improve like this, to at least maintain its current winning percentage, they could finally be back in the playoffs for the first time since 2019 this year and a legitimate championship-level threat in the future.