The Ringer: How the Jalen Suggs Revival Has Elevated the Magic
Posted: Wed Dec 20, 2023 4:04 pm
How the Jalen Suggs Revival Has Elevated the Magic
After two disappointing, injury-plagued seasons, Suggs has found his niche on one of the most promising young teams in the NBA. “He wears his emotion and his heart on his sleeve,” Magic head coach Jamahl Mosley says. “That’s why this group is the way it is.”
One day in early October, during Orlando Magic training camp, Jalen Suggs and his teammates held what can loosely be described as a circle of trust. Players took turns sharing what they wanted from each other, the type of exchange that’s pointless if not grounded in authenticity. Honesty is essential.
For Suggs, entering his third NBA season, the exercise was as straightforward as it was significant. Independently, he had resolved to become one of the best defenders in the league. And when his teammates told him that’s exactly what they sought from him, too, Suggs promised them it’d happen.
“Everybody said that that was something they needed from me,” Suggs tells me. “Without hesitation, I’ll do anything the boys ask me to do. I’ll try my hardest to get it done. I knew it would lead to good things for us … taking on that challenge. And I know it’s hard, but it’s a privilege that they … believe in me.”
Translated: For the Magic to be the best version of themselves, they needed Suggs to embrace a set of self-effacing responsibilities and dismount from the more prominent seat Orlando originally saved for him. Circumstances had shifted dramatically since Suggs was selected fifth overall in the 2021 draft. In that time, he endured a string of nagging injuries and struggled to find any consistency. Meanwhile, Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner emerged as a pair of traditional wing cornerstones that Orlando’s front office was eager to build around.
Given how Suggs’s first two years went, expectations were low but stakes were high coming into the 2023-24 season. The Magic were finally ready to take a step forward, but first they had to answer the pressing internal question of who best fits around their impressive young forward duo—especially in the backcourt. The franchise already signed Cole Anthony to a long-term extension, traded for Markelle Fultz, and had just drafted Anthony Black. Any 22-year-old with Suggs’s talent, upside, explosiveness, and two-way dedication can be plenty useful, but his fit on this roster was unclear.
“I felt myself going left. I think that if I continued where I was going into this year it would have been extremely hard to get off that path.” —Jalen Suggs
Fast-forward to mid-December, and Suggs is averaging 12.5 points and 2.5 assists as Orlando’s starting point guard. The typical reaction to a top-five pick who averages a dozen points in his third season is disappointment. Suggs is not his team’s lead ball handler. He ranks fifth in minutes, shots, and usage rate, and fourth in points per game. That’s not what the Magic envisioned when they drafted him. But these numbers are an increasingly irrelevant way to assess Suggs’s influence on the Magic, off to a 16-9 start despite being the fourth-youngest team in the league.
His task is not glamorous. For someone who was initially expected to be a franchise building block, that downshift has the potential to be uncomfortable. NBA practice facilities are packed with ego and ambition, and sometimes what’s unsaid tends to fester and cause friction. The Magic are lucky, though, that in this situation, with this core, none of that happened.
Instead, Suggs has excelled as the adrenalized pulse of what’s become the NBA’s most pleasant surprise, a team that couldn’t operate the same way without him, nor would it want to.
“He wears his emotion and his heart on his sleeve,” Magic head coach Jamahl Mosley told me. “He’s pure. There’s so much love there. That’s why this group is the way it is. Because he is how he is.”
Suggs’s career pretty much started with an injury, when a sprained left thumb cut his Las Vegas summer league stint short. Then, in late November of his rookie season, he fractured his right thumb against the Sixers, which sidelined him for six weeks; a couple of months later, Suggs sprained his ankle and suffered a bone bruise that forced him out another three weeks. In May, he had surgery to repair a fracture in the same ankle.
During his second preseason, Suggs was carried off the court after he sprained his knee. He managed to return in time for Orlando’s regular-season opener, but then almost immediately suffered another ankle injury that wound up plaguing his sophomore campaign. In all, Suggs missed 63 games in his first two years, suggesting that his frantic, feral playing style when healthy may be at odds with the rigors of a full season. “It was hard to find a rhythm,” he tells me, reflecting on those first two years. “Just constantly coming in and out of lineups … playing injured, playing hurt, and that’s part of it.”
(Earlier this month, Suggs landed wrong on his ankle in a loss against the Cavaliers but missed only one game; a few days later, he had to play with cast on his left wrist after a hard fall on his hand in Boston.)
Even when he was healthy, Suggs couldn’t establish himself as an efficient scoring option anywhere on the court, be it in the paint or from behind the arc. Of all NBA players who attempted at least 300 3s in their first two years, Suggs owns the fourth-lowest percentage. Adapting to the speed of the pro game was also a major struggle at first. Suggs’s decision-making was overzealous. He forced shots and committed a ton of turnovers. That’s all a natural part of getting handed the keys as a 20-year-old, though, and Suggs cleaned up some of his mistakes in his second season. But still, Mosley eventually replaced him with Gary Harris in the starting lineup, clouding Suggs’s long-term outlook in an organization that was experimenting with more stable options in their backcourt.
All those setbacks gave birth to an existential realization. Suggs wasn’t happy, coming off two years that were blemished by health issues, rehab, and frustrating on-court results. “I felt myself going left,” he says, when asked about his mentality heading into last summer. “I think that if I continued where I was going into this year it would have been extremely hard to get off that path.
“There are some journeys that you just kind of have to go through yourself, without family, without friends, without a partner. That was something that I decided to fully dive into, so I could be my best self for my family, for my teammates, for the city of Orlando.”
Suggs knew he had to concede on the court. But before that was possible, he needed to reset how he saw himself outside the sport. He didn’t spend the summer working on his game; for the first time since his senior year of high school, Suggs didn’t touch a basketball for an entire month. Instead, through introspection and soul-searching, he reimagined the type of person he wants to be.
“I stripped my identity away from basketball. It allowed this to be a sport again, to be something, a hobby that I love to do and that feeds my competitive side, and I just let it be that,” he says. “It wasn’t who I was. Being an NBA player wasn’t who Jalen Suggs was. I didn’t like that, and I was headed that way. … I think it just took a lot of, not only pressure off of the game, but I had a whole new level of confidence because I knew as a man … I was a son, brother, nephew, and that’s where my identity lies.”
READ MORE (31 more paragraphs!) - https://www.theringer.com/nba/2023/12/20/24008243/jalen-suggs-orlando-magic-revival-defense
After two disappointing, injury-plagued seasons, Suggs has found his niche on one of the most promising young teams in the NBA. “He wears his emotion and his heart on his sleeve,” Magic head coach Jamahl Mosley says. “That’s why this group is the way it is.”
One day in early October, during Orlando Magic training camp, Jalen Suggs and his teammates held what can loosely be described as a circle of trust. Players took turns sharing what they wanted from each other, the type of exchange that’s pointless if not grounded in authenticity. Honesty is essential.
For Suggs, entering his third NBA season, the exercise was as straightforward as it was significant. Independently, he had resolved to become one of the best defenders in the league. And when his teammates told him that’s exactly what they sought from him, too, Suggs promised them it’d happen.
“Everybody said that that was something they needed from me,” Suggs tells me. “Without hesitation, I’ll do anything the boys ask me to do. I’ll try my hardest to get it done. I knew it would lead to good things for us … taking on that challenge. And I know it’s hard, but it’s a privilege that they … believe in me.”
Translated: For the Magic to be the best version of themselves, they needed Suggs to embrace a set of self-effacing responsibilities and dismount from the more prominent seat Orlando originally saved for him. Circumstances had shifted dramatically since Suggs was selected fifth overall in the 2021 draft. In that time, he endured a string of nagging injuries and struggled to find any consistency. Meanwhile, Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner emerged as a pair of traditional wing cornerstones that Orlando’s front office was eager to build around.
Given how Suggs’s first two years went, expectations were low but stakes were high coming into the 2023-24 season. The Magic were finally ready to take a step forward, but first they had to answer the pressing internal question of who best fits around their impressive young forward duo—especially in the backcourt. The franchise already signed Cole Anthony to a long-term extension, traded for Markelle Fultz, and had just drafted Anthony Black. Any 22-year-old with Suggs’s talent, upside, explosiveness, and two-way dedication can be plenty useful, but his fit on this roster was unclear.
“I felt myself going left. I think that if I continued where I was going into this year it would have been extremely hard to get off that path.” —Jalen Suggs
Fast-forward to mid-December, and Suggs is averaging 12.5 points and 2.5 assists as Orlando’s starting point guard. The typical reaction to a top-five pick who averages a dozen points in his third season is disappointment. Suggs is not his team’s lead ball handler. He ranks fifth in minutes, shots, and usage rate, and fourth in points per game. That’s not what the Magic envisioned when they drafted him. But these numbers are an increasingly irrelevant way to assess Suggs’s influence on the Magic, off to a 16-9 start despite being the fourth-youngest team in the league.
His task is not glamorous. For someone who was initially expected to be a franchise building block, that downshift has the potential to be uncomfortable. NBA practice facilities are packed with ego and ambition, and sometimes what’s unsaid tends to fester and cause friction. The Magic are lucky, though, that in this situation, with this core, none of that happened.
Instead, Suggs has excelled as the adrenalized pulse of what’s become the NBA’s most pleasant surprise, a team that couldn’t operate the same way without him, nor would it want to.
“He wears his emotion and his heart on his sleeve,” Magic head coach Jamahl Mosley told me. “He’s pure. There’s so much love there. That’s why this group is the way it is. Because he is how he is.”
Suggs’s career pretty much started with an injury, when a sprained left thumb cut his Las Vegas summer league stint short. Then, in late November of his rookie season, he fractured his right thumb against the Sixers, which sidelined him for six weeks; a couple of months later, Suggs sprained his ankle and suffered a bone bruise that forced him out another three weeks. In May, he had surgery to repair a fracture in the same ankle.
During his second preseason, Suggs was carried off the court after he sprained his knee. He managed to return in time for Orlando’s regular-season opener, but then almost immediately suffered another ankle injury that wound up plaguing his sophomore campaign. In all, Suggs missed 63 games in his first two years, suggesting that his frantic, feral playing style when healthy may be at odds with the rigors of a full season. “It was hard to find a rhythm,” he tells me, reflecting on those first two years. “Just constantly coming in and out of lineups … playing injured, playing hurt, and that’s part of it.”
(Earlier this month, Suggs landed wrong on his ankle in a loss against the Cavaliers but missed only one game; a few days later, he had to play with cast on his left wrist after a hard fall on his hand in Boston.)
Even when he was healthy, Suggs couldn’t establish himself as an efficient scoring option anywhere on the court, be it in the paint or from behind the arc. Of all NBA players who attempted at least 300 3s in their first two years, Suggs owns the fourth-lowest percentage. Adapting to the speed of the pro game was also a major struggle at first. Suggs’s decision-making was overzealous. He forced shots and committed a ton of turnovers. That’s all a natural part of getting handed the keys as a 20-year-old, though, and Suggs cleaned up some of his mistakes in his second season. But still, Mosley eventually replaced him with Gary Harris in the starting lineup, clouding Suggs’s long-term outlook in an organization that was experimenting with more stable options in their backcourt.
All those setbacks gave birth to an existential realization. Suggs wasn’t happy, coming off two years that were blemished by health issues, rehab, and frustrating on-court results. “I felt myself going left,” he says, when asked about his mentality heading into last summer. “I think that if I continued where I was going into this year it would have been extremely hard to get off that path.
“There are some journeys that you just kind of have to go through yourself, without family, without friends, without a partner. That was something that I decided to fully dive into, so I could be my best self for my family, for my teammates, for the city of Orlando.”
Suggs knew he had to concede on the court. But before that was possible, he needed to reset how he saw himself outside the sport. He didn’t spend the summer working on his game; for the first time since his senior year of high school, Suggs didn’t touch a basketball for an entire month. Instead, through introspection and soul-searching, he reimagined the type of person he wants to be.
“I stripped my identity away from basketball. It allowed this to be a sport again, to be something, a hobby that I love to do and that feeds my competitive side, and I just let it be that,” he says. “It wasn’t who I was. Being an NBA player wasn’t who Jalen Suggs was. I didn’t like that, and I was headed that way. … I think it just took a lot of, not only pressure off of the game, but I had a whole new level of confidence because I knew as a man … I was a son, brother, nephew, and that’s where my identity lies.”
READ MORE (31 more paragraphs!) - https://www.theringer.com/nba/2023/12/20/24008243/jalen-suggs-orlando-magic-revival-defense
