A hip injury sidelined Magic guard Jalen Suggs, and he’s still searching for answers about what happened. After Saturday’s NBA Cup semifinal loss to the Knicks, Suggs could only shrug when asked to describe the issue. “I don’t even know,” he told reporters in the Las Vegas locker room. “We’ll figure out what it is.”
The Magic had indicated during the game that Suggs was dealing with a sore left hip and that he was questionable to return after exiting with 7:35 remaining in the final frame.
Suggs finished with 26 points, 25 of them coming in the first half against New York, but he did not return for the second half. Coach Jamahl Mosley echoed the team’s notes, confirming the same hip-related description after the game and praising Suggs for gutting through the pain.
“He was getting beat up a lot,” Mosley said. “Right now, it’s a sore hip. We’ll look at it when we get back. But at the end of the day, he’s a warrior for being out there dealing with what he’s been dealing with.”
The moment he felt the injury was severe came late in the second quarter when he fouled and grabbed his left side. He stayed on the floor for a time, logged nearly nine minutes in the third, and even finished the third on the court after being bumped by Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns. He left with about three minutes left in the third and returned three minutes into the fourth, before Orlando pulled him out for a rest break.
Suggs expressed a familiar sentiment about injuries: the most painful part is not the pain itself, but the disruption to playing with his teammates. “I truly tried to play. There’s nowhere else I would have rather been than on the court battling with my guys, especially in a close game. But [God] be having others plans, and I can’t be angry at his plans.”
The 23-year-old guard has a history with injuries, including last season when he missed 47 games and underwent season-ending arthroscopic surgery in March to remove a cartilage fragment from his left knee. Before Saturday’s game, he had also sat out four games to manage a left knee issue and another contest in mid-November due to a sore right groin.
Teammates spoke highly of Suggs’s toughness. Paolo Banchero noted that Suggs has been battling through pain in recent games, continuing to play hard for the team. Desmond Bane added that Suggs is defined by his competitive spirit and willingness to lay it all on the line for the win.
Orlando (15-11) is headed home on Sunday before embarking on a four-game Western swing that begins Thursday in Denver and ends next Tuesday in Portland.
Jason Beede can be reached at jbeede@orlandosentinel.com.
