The Orlando Magic continue to feel cursed by injuries, and this one to Jalen Suggs looks like it could be pretty bad. In the fourth quarter of Orlando's victory over the Knicks on Sunday, Suggs took off for a full-speed layup and his right knee appeared to give out on him as he went up for the basket. 

Suggs immediately collapsed to the court and was in considerable pain as he was tended to on the baseline. He was not able to leave the court on his own power. 

This is the dreaded non-contact injury. The Magic will obviously hope it's not as bad as it looked, but with the injury luck they've had, you couldn't blame them if they're expecting the worst news. After the game, Magic coach Sean Sweeney did not have an update on Suggs' status. 

Orlando hit hard by injuries yet again

On Friday, Orlando lost Paolo Banchero to a high-ankle sprain that is expected to keep him sidelined for at least a month, possibly more (high-ankle sprains tend to carry a four-to-six-week recovery timetable). 

Suggs has missed 62 games over the last two years to injury, and he and Franz Wagner combined to miss 73 games last year. The trio of Banchero, Wagner, and Suggs has only managed to play 25 games together over the last two seasons, and now we're only three games into this season and Banchero and Suggs are already down. 

It's just unfortunate. No other way to put it. There was so much promise around this team coming out of the 2024 playoffs. They had drafted Suggs, Wagner and Banchero in three straight lotteries and had just pushed Donovan Mitchell and the Cavaliers to seven games. 

They were young, talented, and when they went all in on the Desmond Bane trade in the summer of 2025, just about everyone officially stamped them as an Eastern Conference contender. But we've just never gotten a full view of their ceiling. Wagner only played in 34 games last year. The year before that, he and Banchero managed just 40 combined games together. 

The two literally suffered the same injury that year. Banchero tore his oblique in the first week of the season, missed 34 games, and just as he was gearing up to come back, Wagner tore his oblique and missed the next six weeks.

Aside from the injuries, there have been real questions as to whether Banchero and Wagner can ultimately fit as a duo, given their shooting inconsistencies. We need to see them together for longer stretches to see whether they can make it work or whether Banchero's shooting can improve. The basketball gods just won't let the experiment get off the ground for any real length of time.  

It's all the more frustrating given the glimpses of actual magic we've seen from this team at full strength. They had the No. 1 seed Pistons down 3-1 in the first round last year until Wagner, of course, missed the last three games of the series with a calf strain and Detroit rallied to advance. 

This season, you figured, or hoped, that the needle of injury luck would finally swing in their favor. But here we go again with Banchero, who was off to a roaring start this year with 35 points in the opener and another 14 through the first half on Friday. He was shooting almost 70% from the field. 

And now it's Suggs, who has quietly been the engine behind their best lineups. Last year, the Magic were almost 11 points better per 100 possessions in relation to their opponent when Suggs was on the floor, per Cleaning the Glass. He's a huge loss. 

With Banchero also out for an extended stretch, there's almost no way to imagine Orlando not being a massive hole six weeks from now, when it will be too late to recover in the behemoth that the Eastern Conference has become. 

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