Jalen Suggs Goes Down With Non-Contact Knee Injury, Pausing a Career Year

The scariest three words in sports just hit the Orlando Magic: non-contact knee injury.

According to Underdog NBA, Jalen Suggs had to be helped to the locker room on Sunday after coming down awkwardly following a layup. There was no collision and no tangled legs in the paint. It was just the absolute worst-case scenario for a player landing on the hardwood.

"Underdog NBA reported Suggs was helped to the locker room after the non-contact landing."

This is a brutal momentum killer for a guy who was finally putting it all together. Suggs has been playing out of his mind this season, averaging a career-best 16.4 points, 4.0 rebounds, and 1.5 steals. He was looking exactly like the two-way menace Orlando drafted him to be.

Now, instead of talking about his breakout campaign, we are back to refreshing medical updates. If you look at Suggs' injury history, it reads like a medical textbook index. He has dealt with a laundry list of ankle, wrist, quad, and knee issues over the last few years. The guy plays with the kind of reckless abandon that makes him a fan favorite, but it also means his body takes more hits than a crash-test dummy.

The timing could not be worse for Orlando. They were already trailing the New York Knicks 86-76 during Sunday's action, coming off back-to-back rough losses to the Atlanta Hawks and Minnesota Timberwolves. Losing your primary point-of-attack defender and offensive spark plug is the kind of thing that sends a team's win total futures straight into the shredder.

For now, the Magic and anyone holding Orlando tickets are stuck in the worst waiting room in sports. We will have to wait for the inevitable MRI to see just how much time Suggs is going to miss. Until then, Orlando's backcourt rotation is going to look incredibly thin, and the coaching staff is going to have to get creative to keep this offense afloat.