Basketball: Wagners clearly win with Magic against Schröder’s Raptors
Despite a strong performance, national team captain Dennis Schröder lost the duel between the basketball world champions and the Wagner brothers in the NBA. With the Toronto Raptors, the playmaker suffered a 107:126 defeat at the Orlando Magic on Wednesday night. While Schröder personally shone with 24 points, Franz (17 points) and Moritz Wagner (10) helped their team to victory with their next good performance.
“It’s always great to see them. How they’re playing right now: Orlando is playing great and they’re a big part of it. We made history a few months ago. I always keep my fingers crossed for my German brothers. I hope they keep it up,” said Schröder after the first meeting with the Wagners since the historic World Cup triumph in Manila on September 10th.
Schröder had a very good day with eight of 13 made field throws and four of four three-pointers, but was still unable to save his team, which was too vulnerable with 23 turnovers, from its eighth defeat in the 14th game of the season. “They played with a lot of energy and we couldn’t keep up. That was the reason why we lost,” said Schröder, whose team went into halftime with an eleven-point deficit.
With a view to the next away game on Thursday night at the Indiana Pacers, Schröder, who only moved to Toronto in the summer, sounded the alarm: “If we play like we did today, we will lose by 40 points. We have to find a way to bring the energy on the court, defend as a team and move the ball on offense.”
Orlando is currently doing surprisingly well with nine wins and five defeats in the Eastern Conference – also because of the Wagners. Since the game against the Raptors was also considered a group game in the new in-season tournament, the team from Florida is also in Group C of the East with a good chance of being in the race for the knockout phase.
Basketball: James first to score over 39,000 points
Basketball superstar LeBron James has reached the next historic milestone in the North American professional league NBA. In his Los Angeles Lakers’ 131:99 win against the Utah Jazz, the 38-year-old became the first player in league history to break the 39,000-point mark. Before the game, James, who had already replaced Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the top point collector in the previous season, was only five points short of that.
A converted three-point shot in the first quarter helped James, who scored a total of 17 points, reach the next highlight of his world career. “I haven’t really had a chance to fully understand what that means,” James said, adding: “Being the first to achieve something is always pretty cool. A wild moment, for sure.” Meanwhile, the Lakers reached the knockout rounds of the new in-season tournament with the victory.
Football: Brady criticizes the NFL level
The NFL has become weaker for seven-time Super Bowl winner Tom Brady after his retirement. “In today’s NFL, I think there’s a lot of mediocrity,” the 46-year-old, who ended his playing football career in February, said on ESPN’s “Stephen A. Smith Show.”
“I no longer see the excellence that I saw in the past,” continued Brady’s criticism: “The coaching is no longer as good as it used to be. I think the development of young players is no longer as good as it used to be. And I think the plans aren’t so good anymore.”
Brady also believes that the rule changes to protect professionals have had a negative impact on the game. “A lot of bad habits have become established in sports,” said the former quarterback of the New England Patriots and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
He is primarily referring to the hard tackles, which, unlike before, are punished immediately. Brady cited players like Ray Lewis, Rodney Harrison and Ronnie Lott as examples “who influenced the game in a certain way – and any hit they would have made would have been a penalty today.”
Brady therefore mentioned a kind of self-protection as a possible solution. “Offensive players have to protect themselves,” said Brady, who played in the NFL between 2000 and 2023 and will start as a TV expert in 2024: “It’s not the defensive player. But if someone hits you hard, then there is a punishment.” That’s a shame, explained the idol.
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