The Official Jalen Suggs Thread

[pepe1991]

This is raugh and ugly right now...

His pick and roll game is worthless in this moment. His points per possessoin is 0,43, he shoots 17% from them. And there is healthy amount of possessions we try it. 5 a game.

But in same time , off ball, guy offers nothing. He shoots 31,9% from catch and shoot (39,4% eFG).

There are only two solutions when he returns from injury.
Make him bench playmaker and let him run bench unit and make transition for him as starter slowly. Or keep playing him as starter and hope he figures things out.

Benching him might kill his confidence, but in same time getting runned over vs starters probably does nothing for him either.

[yoyojw17]

This is raugh and ugly right now...

His pick and roll game is worthless in this moment. His points per possessoin is 0,43, he shoots 17% from them. And there is healthy amount of possessions we try it. 5 a game.

But in same time , off ball, guy offers nothing. He shoots 31,9% from catch and shoot (39,4% eFG).

There are only two solutions when he returns from injury.
Make him bench playmaker and let him run bench unit and make transition for him as starter slowly. Or keep playing him as starter and hope he figures things out.

Benching him might kill his confidence, but in same time getting runned over vs starters probably does nothing for him either.

Pepe.... as usual... never pulling the punches. But... personally i agree with you about benching him. Let him make his mistakes with the second unit and get accustomed to the league. personally i don't think he will be as negative about the action... cuz it's obvious he is not where we want him and he probably wants himself to be. Hope the injury gets RJ a chance at the starter role for a lil... and we can run a more traditional lineup instead.

[Xatticus]

If you don't want to deal with the learning process, then you shouldn't bother drafting in the lottery. We know what we signed up for. I don't know why people want to bail 13 games in.

[MagicFan101]

What good does benching Suggs do?

What precious wins are we fighting for this season?

This season is about rebuilding and development. Obviously he can develop from the bench but rotations and chemistry matter as well. We drafted Suggs at #5 not to be a backup but to be a foundational piece. We need to development as such. That means playing him alongside guys most likely to play in starting roles for the future.

For me it’s that simple. I don’t care what it looks like today. Use this time power through the struggles.

[fendilim]

If you don't want to deal with the learning process, then you shouldn't bother drafting in the lottery. We know what we signed up for. I don't know why people want to bail 13 games in.

Out of the top 4 prospects, wasnt Suggs supposedly the most NBA ready?

Not concerned about Suggs tho, I think he is struggling playing the two. Size, strength and length.

[Xatticus]

If you don't want to deal with the learning process, then you shouldn't bother drafting in the lottery. We know what we signed up for. I don't know why people want to bail 13 games in.

Out of the top 4 prospects, wasnt Suggs supposedly the most NBA ready?

Not concerned about Suggs tho, I think he is struggling playing the two. Size, strength and length.

He definitely was not. Green is raw, but Cunningham and Mobley were considered plug-and-play.

[thelead]

We drafted the kid top 5 and making him defer to our unproven 15th pick from last year. It's just not a logical plan.

For what it's worth, here was my big board comment about Suggs:

'Suggs - Will likely not be a superstar but will likely be a reliable starter for a while'

[RookieStar]

Guys... iit seems some of you forgot what rebuilding is.

Less than 20 games in and you ready to give up on a top rookie because he didnt do what a Luka rookie did coming out of the gate?

Growing pains. There will.be ugly games. There will.be losses. There will be "throwing the remote at the TV" instances.

The fact that Suggs showed skills in defense, court awareness and etc while game by game he is showing improvements in his weakness shluld make us hoepful.

[pepe1991]

"Wasn't nba ready, isnt' nba ready" is nicer way to say "can't play in nba today".

There is some validity in that excuse if player is super thin and does not have strenght to hold his own ( Nerlens Noel scaling at 6'10-185 pounds as rookie for example ) or player is hardly even 19 years old and basically post puberty-teen. ( that's why they stopped highschool jump to nba in first place, because it was comical how unprapared those kids were, JR Smith once said that during first practice in nba he thought he will die, ).

But Suggs isn't any of it. Suggs is 215 pounds heavy, athletic ,above average size - guard. He is 20 ( almost year older than J. Green, year older than Sengun, same age as Mobley or Cade or Franz ).

All his problems are skill related.
He can't dribble, his ballhanlding gets him nowhere, he does not know how to shield ball, he attacks paint in times where line isn't there and he tosses some of worst contact shots i've seen.
And he flat out can't shoot the ball.




I don't care about him not being able to shoot right now, sometimes young players don't have legs to sustain good shooting. But ballhandler that can't handle the ball is clear red flag. Another red flag is that nba's bread and butter is pick&roll and he can't play it. So you have to Ben-Simmons- your-way-around traditional offense. But he is not Ben Simmons and isn't 6'10 and isn't unguardable open floor driver like Simmons, nor we showed any elite passing skills. ( mostly, as i've said, his ballhandling is comically bad ).

I'm not writing him off or anything like that, it's rebuild, we have nothing better to do but play him, but it's clear that he is way bigger project than anybody expected. And we don't help him out with composition of roster. Bamba's screening is comical, Wendell is slipping before making touch half of the time, Cole is ballhoging and our spacing is now Bamba and Carter and that will age with more games as poorly as anybody can imagine.

Lot of problems right now. Suggs will either be benched for Fultz and run second unit (and we will pray he will learn how to handle ball in offseason ) or we will hope coaching will find something for him to do as starter.

[drsd]

What good does benching Suggs do?

What good does benching Fultz do?
What good does benching Anthony do?

This is the rub. Unless the Magic go with a three-guard set, there is going to have to be a choice here.

[drsd]

We drafted the kid top 5 and making him defer to our unproven 15th pick from last year. It's just not a logical plan.'

Unproven?

Anthony had 34 NBA starts before the season started. AND: the Magic lacked three PGs to injury on opening night in Moore, Carter-Williams, and Fultz. If this roster had been healthy on game-1, it would have been Suggs that came off of the bench, not Anthony.

..

[fateis007]

I am sorry but this all comes down to coaching. Jalen Suggs is not an off the ball player. Does he need to tighten his handles? Sure...

But he is being badly misused and has had his role taken away from him by Cole Anthony. He is not a shooting guard, and if were going to lose games and be a bad team, it should not be from letting Cole stat pad, it should be from letting Suggs run the pick and roll all game for better or worse. You don't take someone at #5 and play them out of position. Cole simply doesn't have the vision/play making to be entitled to this role. The only one that should be entitled at this point is Fultz, because he can actually run an offense.

Suggs is atheletic enough to create seperation on a pick and roll and attack the mid range and paint, yet we rarely do it. (he is constantly passing it right now, because of the lack of spacing and teams collapsing) He can also play some bullyball with his size in the post. He is a good sized point guard, but an average size shooting guard.

I am already pretty sick of coach Mosley to be honest, I was at the game yesterday and the offensive sets hes running are just terrible. So many forced shots and lack of penetration. Just a bunch of swinging the ball to find a forced shot. For an offense that is supposed to play with the pass, I am not seeing it at all. He really has them executing terrible, it's hard to get into a rhythm when you are forcing so much due to bad coaching.

Washington skill wise without Beal in there isn't some allstar team, they simply played the game much better then us. If they were knocking down more of their open shots, we would probably have been down by 40

Suggs doesn't need to be benched, quite the opposite, we need to bench Cole and put a real shooting guard that can open up the floor for him to learn the game and create space. But one of them needs to hit the bench either way and have a true shooting guard in place ( Harris or Ross)

[I Rasharted]

I'm fine with Suggs sucking. More Ls for the L basket.

[MagicFan101]

What good does benching Suggs do?

What good does benching Fultz do?
What good does benching Anthony do?

This is the rub. Unless the Magic go with a three-guard set, there is going to have to be a choice here.

Anthony is going to be a career backup.

Fultz may not have a future on the team.

In both cases it doesn’t matter.

Suggs is the guy we just drafted #5 overall and invested our future on. Not Cole and not Fultz.

[tiderulz]

We drafted the kid top 5 and making him defer to our unproven 15th pick from last year. It's just not a logical plan.

For what it's worth, here was my big board comment about Suggs:

'Suggs - Will likely not be a superstar but will likely be a reliable starter for a while'

bigger thing to me, we then moved him to offball SG, when he had been playing PG and the ball in his hands.

[thelead]

We drafted the kid top 5 and making him defer to our unproven 15th pick from last year. It's just not a logical plan.'

Unproven?

Anthony had 34 NBA starts before the season started. AND: the Magic lacked three PGs to injury on opening night in Moore, Carter-Williams, and Fultz. If this roster had been healthy on game-1, it would have been Suggs that came off of the bench, not Anthony.

..

Yes, unproven. Based on what you've seen, are you ready to give him a big dollar contract based on his current counting stats and what that typically commands in the league? If the answer is no, he is still unproven even to you. Suggs coming off the bench is why this team isn't respected even in its own city. The Orlando 'Tragic', as most locals call it, have earned that name.

[Knightro]

We drafted the kid top 5 and making him defer to our unproven 15th pick from last year. It's just not a logical plan.

This is tough.

I understand that most of us, myself included, see Suggs as having more upside than Anthony as a long-term starting piece.

But at the same time Anthony has just been so much better than Suggs that it's just hard to justify switching their roles right now.

These things tend to have a way of playing themselves out though. I can't possibly imagine Suggs is going to slash .312/.203 with a 20.4 TOV% all year. Conversely, I don't anticipate Anthony being as good as he has been over the course of the entire season.

[Knightro]

If this roster had been healthy on game-1, it would have been Suggs that came off of the bench, not Anthony.

Absolutely would not have been this.

Suggs was going to be a starter from game 1 no matter what.

[thelead]

We drafted the kid top 5 and making him defer to our unproven 15th pick from last year. It's just not a logical plan.

This is tough.

I understand that most of us, myself included, see Suggs as having more upside than Anthony as a long-term starting piece.

But at the same time Anthony has just been so much better than Suggs that it's just hard to justify switching their roles right now.

These things tend to have a way of playing themselves out though. I can't possibly imagine Suggs is going to slash .312/.203 with a 20.4 TOV% all year. Conversely, I don't anticipate Anthony being as good as he has been over the course of the entire season.

It's one or the other though: Do you have faith in your pick or don't you. This team is just ran by a bunch of idiots.

[Knightro]

It's one or the other though: Do you have faith in your pick or don't you. This team is just ran by a bunch of idiots.

This seems a little unfair. If the Magic *didn't* have faith in Suggs, his play has absolutely justified a benching/minutes reduction a long time ago.

He's started every game and is playing 28 minutes a night despite being statistically the worst player in the league by a mile in BPM.

Maybe we don't like his role, but I can't say they don't have faith in him as a player right now.