![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/GettyImages-2272245211-784x441.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Magic guard Jalen Suggs isn\u2019t afraid to unleash his football mentality on the basketball court.<\/p>\n
Editor\u2019s Note: Read more NBA coverage from The Athletic\u00a0here<\/a>. The views on this page do not necessarily reflect the views of the NBA or its teams.\u00a0<\/p>\n ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014 A scar runs along Jalen Suggs\u2019 upper left arm. The size and shape of a medium Band-Aid, darker than the surrounding skin, it stretches across an area between his shoulder muscle and his triceps. The Orlando Magic guard\u2019s lifetime in sports has left him with many marks on his body, but that one holds a special significance. It reminds him of his football career.<\/p>\n \u201cI like all my scars,\u201d Suggs said after a recent practice. \u201cThey all kind of tell stories. But I love the game of football. I\u2019m forever thankful for what it\u2019s taught me.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2017, Suggs, then a sophomore quarterback for the SMB Wolfpack, carried the football during an intense high-school rivalry game and absorbed what he thought was a routine tackle. He did not feel anything unusual. After he stood up, he gathered his teammates for a huddle, and his teammates pointed to his left arm. Suggs looked down to see that his arm had been gashed open and was dripping blood. His teammates implored him to receive immediate medical attention. They ran one more play, and then Suggs went to the sideline, where athletic trainers patched the injury. Suggs returned to that game.<\/p>\n \u201cTeams knew how good he was, and they often wanted to test his toughness and take shots at him and beat him up,\u201d said Hugh Brown, who was the Wolfpack\u2019s quarterbacks coach in 2017 and is now the head coach. \u201cHe never backed down from it.\u201d<\/p>\n Brown and his fellow SMB coaches describe Suggs as the ultimate connector and a dogged competitor, someone who reveled in the sport\u2019s physicality and felt such a deep obligation to his teammates that he would attempt to play hurt.<\/p>\n Suggs\u2019 attitude has not changed. Although the compression shirt he typically wears underneath his Magic jersey covers his upper left arm during games, you do not need to see his gnarly scar to realize that he remains a football player at heart. He seeks contact, relishing opportunities to crash passing lanes, take charges and dive onto the basketball court. As Orlando\u2019s starting point guard, he enjoys hurling long outlet passes almost as much as he enjoyed throwing long touchdown passes.<\/p>\n Suggs is a central reason the Magic lead their Eastern Conference first-round series against the equally defensive-minded Detroit Pistons 3-2. Suggs set the tone for the series in the opening quarter of Game 1, disrupting Pistons passes, sinking a pair of 3-pointers and belly-flopping to the floor to collect a loose basketball.<\/p>\n When the series resumes Friday for Game 6 in Orlando,\u00a0with the Magic desperate to close it out and avoid a winner-take-all Game 7 on Sunday on the Pistons\u2019 home floor, Suggs almost certainly will be in the middle of the action again, imbuing his teammates with a level of frenetic energy that he provides naturally. Even when he struggles on offense, he improves Orlando\u2019s defense. Like the ball-hawking, hard-hitting NFL defensive backs he has always admired, he anticipates opponents\u2019 passes.<\/p>\n Suggs also craves collisions. He excels at beating opponents to spots on the floor, sometimes wrecking dribble-handoffs before a big man can give the ball to a guard or anticipating picks.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s just so good at getting in-between,\u201d Magic forward Paolo Banchero said. \u201cI guess he\u2019s not afraid of that contact, which is sort of what you would see in a football player. Most basketball players don\u2019t have that natural instinct to do that, and he does.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ve played with anybody like Jalen. It\u2019s hard for me to think of anyone (like him) or try to compare him to anyone. He\u2019s a pretty unique player, just how he puts his body on the line, gives his body up, diving on the floor, diving out of bounds, going for chase-down blocks.\u201d<\/p>\n Suggs, who is 6 feet 5 and 212 pounds, is the most irreplaceable defender on a team filled with tall, agile and tough defenders. During the 2023-24 season, his third year in the pros, he earned a spot on the NBA All-Defensive Second Team. In recent years, he has ranked near the top league-wide among point guards and combo guards in block percentage, steal percentage and defensive-rebounding percentage.<\/p>\n It\u2019s no wonder, then, that when Suggs missed the 2025 postseason because he had undergone knee surgery, many people within the Magic conceded that their team had only a minimal chance to upset the defending NBA champion Boston Celtics, a team with several outstanding perimeter scorers. The Magic lost that series in five hard-fought games for many reasons, but one of them was Suggs\u2019 absence.<\/p>\n His penchant for contact has its negative side. It has made him vulnerable to injuries, and he has endured two surgeries during his pro career. In 2022, his rookie season ended early because of a slight stress fracture in his right ankle. During a season-ending arthroscopic surgery late last season, a physician removed a cartilage fragment within his left knee and performed a mosaicplasty procedure to repair the trochlear joint surface.<\/p>\n Magic medical staff brought him back slowly from that surgery, placing him under minutes restrictions early in the season. He wound up missing 25 regular-season games: four to manage the left knee, one because of a sore groin, seven because of a hip contusion, eight because of an MCL contusion in his right knee, three because of a back injury and two because of an illness. The defense struggled during his absences and when he was off the court<\/a>.<\/p>\n Suggs\u2019 Magic coaches and teammates recognize the risks of his physicality, but they have largely refrained from asking him to rein in his football mentality on the basketball court.<\/p>\n \u201cTo hold him back from being who he is, we won\u2019t do that,\u201d coach Jamahl Mosley said. \u201cObviously, being able to be smart in certain situations? Absolutely. But you\u2019ll never hold him back from who he\u2019s always going to be as a basketball player. \u2026<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s like asking someone with superpowers not to use them, and I think that takes away from the team if he\u2019s not being his full authentic self.\u201d<\/p>\n The coaches of the SMB Wolfpack faced a similar dilemma.<\/p>\n How, exactly, were they going to protect such a fierce competitor?<\/p>\n Suggs started at quarterback as a freshman. He could scramble for first downs, and he could throw the ball 50 yards in the air with a flick of his right arm. He also studied NFL All-Pro safeties Ed Reed, Brian Dawkins and Troy Polamalu. One of his second cousins is Terrell Suggs, a seven-time Pro Bowl linebacker who won a Super Bowl with the Ravens and another Super Bowl with the Kansas City Chiefs.<\/p>\n Suggs was so important to the Wolfpack that the coaches decided not to play him on defense as a freshman. In subsequent seasons, they usually waited until playoff games to deploy him in the defensive backfield.<\/p>\n The coaches could not limit Suggs completely, though. When the Wolfpack\u2019s backup quarterback took snaps in practice, especially during one-on-one coverage drills, Suggs sometimes snuck into the line at cornerback or at wide receiver just because he enjoyed the competition so much.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was a guy that you\u2019d have to hold back,\u201d said Collin Quinn, who was the Wolfpack\u2019s head coach during Suggs\u2019 first three years of high school. \u201cHe loved being out there. He loved being out there with his buddies. He loved being a kid and competing, and loved getting better and practicing his craft. He wasn\u2019t a reluctant football player. He was all-in.\u201d<\/p>\n The SMB Wolfpack isn\u2019t a typical high-school football squad. It\u2019s a cooperative team comprising students from four Twin Cities private schools: St. Paul Academy and Summit School, The Blake School, Hope Academy and Minnehaha Academy. Suggs, who attended Minnehaha, wasn\u2019t merely one of SMB\u2019s best players; he was one of its best connectors, helping to unite kids from the different schools.<\/p>\n SMB won the Minnesota Class AAAA championship in 2018 during Suggs\u2019 junior year and finished as the Class AAAA runner-up in 2019, losing 22-21 in overtime of a game in which Suggs sprained one of his knees just before halftime but played in the second half.<\/p>\n \u201cHe could beat you in so many ways,\u201d said Chris Goodwin, who was SMB\u2019s offensive coordinator in 2018 and its head coach in 2019. \u201cHe was a great passer. He could make plays. As a quarterback, he was so elusive. I\u2019ve seen him break four or five tackles on a play or just elude four or five guys and then throw a touchdown pass. Some of his highlights, I\u2019ve just never seen anything like in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n For Suggs, choosing basketball over football was an excruciating decision.<\/p>\n His suitors in football included his home state Minnesota Golden Gophers and the Ohio State Buckeyes.<\/p>\n In an interview last week, Golden Gophers coach P.J. Fleck said that he and his staff spent four years recruiting Suggs. Fleck wanted Suggs to play quarterback at Minnesota, and Fleck said Suggs \u201cabsolutely\u201d had enough talent to play in the NFL as a quarterback, wideout, cornerback or as a safety.<\/p>\n \u201cIncredibly gracious, ultimate connector, elite competitor \u2014 that kind of sums up Jalen Suggs, in my opinion,\u201d Fleck said.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll give you a basketball analogy because he plays basketball: He was the ultimate point guard on the football field,\u201d Fleck added. \u201cIncredible distributor, understood situational awareness, knew how to use his legs. (He was an) extender of plays, kept his eyes down the field, distributed the ball (to) who it needed to go to. He threw to the open guy \u2014 it sounds simple \u2014 and then made everybody else around him better.\u201d<\/p>\n Suggs said he nearly chose to attend Minnesota. Instead, he picked Gonzaga, which does not have a varsity football program. He said people often assume that he chose to play basketball over football because of the more substantial risk of injury in football. He insists that was not a big consideration.<\/p>\n \u201cI was always more worried about getting hurt on the basketball court than in football,\u201d Suggs said. \u201cI always thought I could protect myself a bit more, to initiate or avoid contact, a bit more on the football field. \u2026<\/p>\n \u201cI never really got hurt too much on the football field, to be honest. It was always the hardwood that messed me up. But yeah, that really wasn\u2019t a factor. It was the timeline (and) accessibility to my main goal, which was generational wealth. I still love the game. I love them both.\u201d<\/p>\n Suggs has accomplished his main goal. Drafted fifth in 2021 by the Magic, he earned approximately $30 million during the four years of his rookie-scale contract. He just completed the first season of a five-year contract worth $151 million.<\/p>\n He said he doesn\u2019t regret his decision to choose basketball over football, but he acknowledges that football is never that far from his thoughts.<\/p>\n Even now, when he feels like he\u2019s slipping on the defensive end and needs to concentrate further, he said he will watch football highlights of safeties intercepting passes or recovering fumbles or making bone-crunching hits. Those plays inspire him.<\/p>\n