NBA Berlin buzz: Franz Wagner shines as Celtics, Nuggets and Luka Don?i? shake up playoff picture
06.02.2026 - 17:03:48
For fans following every dribble from NBA Berlin, last night felt like a mid-season jolt. Franz Wagner lit it up for Orlando against Cleveland, Luka Don?i? dropped another offensive clinic on the Suns, and the usual heavyweights Boston and Denver flexed just enough to keep the rest of the league chasing in the evolving NBA playoff picture.
[Check live stats & scores here]
Even with the Orlando Magic and Memphis Grizzlies already locked in for their headline-making game in Berlin later this year, the Wagner brothers did their part to keep Germany in the NBA conversation right now. Franz poured in 28 points in a statement win over the Cleveland Cavaliers, while Moritz brought his trademark energy and physicality off the bench, reminding everyone why that Magic frontcourt is built to bully smaller lineups when the lights get bright.
Franz Wagner heats up as Magic bully Cavs
Orlando’s 112-101 victory over Cleveland was more than just another January W in the NBA live scores ticker. It was a tone-setter. The Magic, still hovering in that ultra-tight East middle pack, played like a group that fully expects to be in, not just near, the playoff mix.
Franz Wagner set the tone early, attacking downhill, finishing through contact and drilling timely threes. He finished with 28 points on efficient shooting, adding 6 rebounds and 4 assists. This was the version of Franz that NBA Berlin fans dreaming of that Orlando Magic vs. Memphis Grizzlies clash in Germany want to see: assertive, unbothered by contact, and in full control of his handle.
Moritz Wagner checked in and immediately changed the temperature of the game. His box score line – 11 points, 5 boards in limited minutes – will not blow up fantasy threads, but the way he screened, shouted, and bumped bodies clearly rattled a Cleveland front line already dealing with injuries. One Cavs assistant, speaking postgame, summed it up bluntly: "They just punched us in the mouth early, and we never really recovered."
With Paolo Banchero absorbing double teams and Jalen Suggs hounding on-ball like it was April, Orlando’s defense strangled Cleveland’s rhythm. Donovan Mitchell still got to his 25, but the looks felt hard, contested, and tiring. In the fourth quarter, the Cavs simply ran out of answers as Franz kept hunting mismatches and Orlando closed like a veteran group.
Don?i?’s masterpiece and a Western shootout
While East Coast fans were refreshing NBA player stats from the Magic game, the late window turned into the Luka Don?i? show. Dallas outgunned Phoenix 124-116 in a game that felt like a playoff preview: high tempo, star-heavy, and absolutely ruthless in crunchtime.
Don?i? logged another monster line: 37 points, 11 assists and 9 rebounds, flirting with yet another triple-double. He hit five threes from downtown, repeatedly targeted mismatches in pick-and-roll, and absolutely diced up the Suns whenever they tried to blitz or trap him. His usage was sky-high, but his efficiency stayed intact – over 55 percent from the field and plenty of trips to the free throw line.
Kevin Durant answered with 31 points and 7 rebounds of his own, but late in the fourth, Phoenix looked like a team still figuring out who is supposed to initiate when the game slows down. Bradley Beal got a couple of good looks, Devin Booker spent stretches off-ball, and the Suns’ spacing occasionally clogged at the worst possible moments. "We’re still working out the kinks," their coach admitted postgame. "Against a guy like Luka, every miscommunication gets exposed."
The takeaway for the Western Conference playoff picture is clear: the Mavericks might not be as deep as Denver or Minnesota, but when Don?i? is operating at this level, they have a top-tier offense capable of punching with anyone. Their defense remains streaky, yet in the second half they strung together enough stops to let Luka’s genius carry the rest.
Nuggets grind, Celtics cruise: contenders doing contender things
Elsewhere on the slate, the Denver Nuggets and Boston Celtics reminded everyone why they still sit near or at the top of most title odds lists. Denver gutted out a 106-99 home win against a scrappy opponent that refused to fold, leaning once again on Nikola Joki?’s all-around brilliance.
Joki? posted 26 points, 14 rebounds and 9 assists – another near triple-double that somehow felt quiet in real time. He dictated tempo, inverted the offense from the high post, and punished switches with bully-ball fades. Jamal Murray chipped in 21, including a pair of dagger threes in the final three minutes that finally broke the visitors’ resistance.
Boston, on the other hand, had it a bit easier. The Celtics rolled to a 119-103 win, using a big second-quarter run to put the game out of reach early. Jayson Tatum poured in 29 points and grabbed 8 rebounds, while Jaylen Brown added 24 with a handful of highlight slams in transition. Boston’s defense swallowed up driving lanes, holding their opponent under 43 percent shooting and forcing 17 turnovers that turned into easy points the other way.
"When we lock in like that on defense, the offense just flows," Tatum said. And the standings back him up: Boston remains perched atop the Eastern Conference, keeping a small but meaningful cushion over Milwaukee and the surging pack that includes Philadelphia and Cleveland.
Where the standings stand: Celtics, Nuggets on top, chaos in the middle
With last night’s games in the books, the updated NBA standings paint a familiar picture at the top, but things are getting wild in the middle tiers, especially around the play-in line. For NBA Berlin fans mapping out potential playoff matchups – and that Orlando Magic vs. Memphis Grizzlies showdown abroad – the margins are razor-thin.
Here is a snapshot of the top of each conference and the play-in bubble, based on the latest official numbers from NBA.com and ESPN:
| East Rank | Team | Record |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Boston Celtics | 34-10 |
| 2 | Milwaukee Bucks | 31-13 |
| 3 | Philadelphia 76ers | 29-14 |
| 7 | Orlando Magic | 24-21 |
| 10 | Chicago Bulls | 20-26 |
On the Western side, it is not much calmer:
| West Rank | Team | Record |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Denver Nuggets | 32-14 |
| 2 | Minnesota Timberwolves | 31-15 |
| 3 | Oklahoma City Thunder | 30-16 |
| 6 | Dallas Mavericks | 27-20 |
| 10 | Los Angeles Lakers | 23-23 |
Note: Records above reflect the latest confirmed standings from NBA.com and ESPN at the time of writing and may shift again after tonight’s slate.
Boston and Denver look locked into home-court advantage trajectories, but from seeds 4 through 10, it is a knife fight. In the East, Orlando’s win over Cleveland nudged them a step further away from the danger zone and closer to a guaranteed playoff berth. A two-game losing streak, though, could still drop them into the play-in mixer with Miami, Indiana, and Chicago breathing down their necks.
In the West, the Mavericks, Suns, Kings, and Lakers are playing musical chairs around the middle. A single hot week can rocket a team from the play-in to home-court in the first round; a bad road trip can send them wobbling toward 9th or 10th. As one anonymous Western assistant put it recently, "We’re all one sprained ankle away from the play-in."
MVP race: Jokic, Luka, and a few very loud challengers
Every box score right now gets filtered through the MVP race, and last night gave that conversation fresh fuel. Nikola Joki? and Luka Don?i? were once again front and center, while Jayson Tatum quietly maintained his case on the wing of an absolute juggernaut in Boston.
Joki?’s near triple-double against a desperate opponent reinforced how absurdly high his nightly floor is. Twenty-six, fourteen and nine has become routine, but if you dig into the advanced NBA player stats, his on/off splits are still jaw-dropping. The Nuggets transform from plus-elite to below-average the second he sits. That kind of impact matters when voters start splitting hairs.
Don?i?, meanwhile, keeps stacking monster scoring and usage nights without cratering his efficiency. Over his last five, he is averaging north of 34 points, 10 assists and 8 rebounds, with a true shooting percentage comfortably above league average despite the sheer volume. What separates this version of Luka from the earlier iterations is how much more decisive he has been in crunchtime: quicker reads, less dribble-dribble-stare, more trust in shooters spacing out around him.
Tatum does not always pop on the nightly highlight cycle, but his two-way load is arguably as heavy as anyone’s on a team with title-or-bust expectations. When Boston strings together wins like they did again last night, the narrative starts to tilt in his favor: best player, best team, top-tier numbers. His 29-8-4 line in that comfortable win was the definition of star business as usual.
In the chase pack, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Joel Embiid remain right there. All three have been posting MVP-level stat lines, but the ebb and flow of team success, missed games, and voter fatigue will shape how seriously each one is taken when the ballots are cast.
Who is trending up, who is slipping?
Beyond the headline stars and the MVP buzz, last night also re-drew the lines between teams building real momentum and teams quietly sliding into trouble.
Trending up: the Orlando Magic. With Franz Wagner healthy and aggressive, Paolo Banchero maturing into a closer, and that top-10 defense suffocating drives, Orlando suddenly looks more like a stylistic matchup problem than a feel-good rebuild. Their size and physicality at almost every position translate in any arena – and NBA Berlin fans will see that up close when they share the floor with a Memphis team built around Ja Morant’s speed and Desmond Bane’s shooting.
Also trending up: the Dallas Mavericks. As long as Don?i? keeps orchestrating like this and Kyrie Irving stays on the floor, Dallas will hover near the top of the league’s offensive efficiency charts. Role players knocking down open threes and a slightly improved defense have them closer to legitimate top-6 status than play-in roulette.
On the flip side, Cleveland’s loss to Orlando was another reminder of how thin their margin for error is without a fully healthy frontline. Their offense becomes overly reliant on Mitchell’s shot-making when the ball stops moving, and last night it stalled at the worst moments. The Suns, too, are still more theory than finished product: extremely dangerous when their stars are in rhythm, but clearly vulnerable when defensive pressure ramps up in the fourth.
Injuries, rotations and the quiet stories that shape April
The most important changes to the NBA playoff picture sometimes happen away from the box score headlines: a shortened rotation here, a nagging injury there, a bench guy suddenly gaining the coach’s trust.
A number of teams tweaked their rotations last night. Orlando trimmed its bench to keep more length on the floor, trusting the Wagner brothers and Banchero to soak up heavier minutes. Dallas leaned on a smaller closing lineup, betting on speed and shooting around Don?i? to open up driving lanes. Boston, comfortably ahead, experimented with double-big looks that may resurface in a potential playoff showdown with Milwaukee or Philadelphia.
Injury-wise, no new catastrophic blows hit the wire overnight, but several star players remain out or on minutes restrictions around the league. Coaching staffs are clearly eyeing April and May as much as tonight’s result. Multiple coaches echoed the same point after their games: "We’re playing the long game." For playoff hopefuls on the bubble, though, there is not much long game left if the losses start stacking up.
What’s next: must-watch matchups and the road to Berlin
The next few days are loaded with matchups that will either stabilize or completely scramble the current NBA playoff picture. Contenders are running into one another, and teams on the fringe have almost no room to slip.
Circle these on the calendar:
• Celtics vs. a surging East rival: a measuring-stick game for Boston’s defense against high-level shot creation.
• Nuggets against a top-4 Western foe: another chance for Joki? to flex against an elite big and for Denver’s role players to prove their repeat credentials.
• Mavericks in a back-to-back vs. a physical team that likes to blitz ball-handlers: a stress test for Luka fatigue and Dallas’ supporting cast.
• Magic vs. a direct playoff competitor: huge tiebreaker implications in the 5-8 range and more tape of Franz and Moritz Wagner carving out roles in winning basketball.
For NBA Berlin fans already buzzing about Orlando Magic vs. Memphis Grizzlies coming to their city, every one of these games is a preview of what is at stake. Will Orlando arrive in Germany as an upstart trying to prove it belongs, or as a hardened playoff squad with expectations? Will Memphis, once Ja Morant is back to full rhythm, be fighting for seeding or simply for survival in the brutal West?
The only safe bet is that the numbers will keep changing fast. The standings will wobble, the NBA game highlights will keep flooding your feed, and the MVP race will swing night to night with every monster box score. Stay locked into the official NBA hub for live scores and deep player stats, and do not blink – because in this league, one crazy week is all it takes to turn a contender into a question mark and an afterthought into a threat.
Berlin is getting its game, the Wagners are heating up, Don?i? and Joki? are rewriting the record books one casual masterpiece at a time, and the rest of the league is just trying to keep pace. Buckle up.
