Evaluating Jalen Suggs as a playmaker [OC Analysis]

[Quick note: this was originally meant for the general NBA audience at r/nbadiscussion, so please forgive some of the no-duh stuff for Magic fans.]

Jalen Suggs’ defense is his calling card, and rightly so. He swallows up ballhandlers like Pac-Man chasing ghosts, menacing them from all sides while they look desperately for an escape. His defense is twitchy and unpredictable, me after accidentally drinking two coffees in the morning. Only Suggs can make a deflection a highlight. I’ve watched this play more times than I can count: [video here]

Look at how Suggs transforms from a covering-his-berries charge-taking pose to a pouncing tiger, enveloping Henderson’s pass attempt so completely that the ball never even leaves his hand. How does he Megatron that quickly? It was one of my favorite defensive plays of the year, full stop.

This one, too. Suggs leaps way too early after Shaedon Sharpe loses his handle but somehow blocks the rock out of bounds as gravity tugs him back to Earth. The level of mid-air body control and reaction time still blows my mind: [video here]

Suggs’ defense is established at this point. The Magic know what they will get from the All-Defensive Second-Teamer on that end. It’s Suggs’ offensive game that still has question marks; Orlando is betting that he has the answers.

[Thanks for reading! As always, I've collected about a dozen illustrative video clips for this piece. They can all be found here or at the various links throughout the article.]

He’s already rebutted questions about his shooting. Suggs shot 21% from three as a rookie and just 33% two years ago. Last year, however, he shot a hair under 40% on 5.1 attempts per game, including an excellent 38% on difficult pull-up attempts. Even if Suggs takes a slight step back next season, he should still be a real threat from three-point range.

The suffocating defense and brazen shooting give Suggs a very high floor as an NBA starter, a 3-and-Der living up to both ends of the moniker. But the Magic believe his ceiling is higher. By letting Markelle Fultz walk and not signing any other point guards, Orlando has set Suggs up to shoulder a much larger playmaking burden next season.

To be clear, the Magic will continue to point guard by committee. Star forwards Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner are good passers, and they initiate much of the offense. But there’s a reason the team kept non-shooting guard Fultz around despite desperately needing spacing. Just look at the Phoenix Suns last season for another example. Great scorers almost always prefer to have a floor general to make their lives easier. As Banchero said after the Magic’s playoff loss to the Cavaliers, “[H]aving a guy who can set the table and be reliable [is something Orlando needs to improve]… I would rather be more of an offensive hub than the point guard, if that makes sense.”

Suggs, despite being a point guard in college, has not had to do much table-setting in the NBA. Last year, five different Magic players had a higher assist rate than Suggs, and he was sixth on the team in assists per game despite playing the third-most minutes (he did average 4.4 assists as a rookie, but that was before Orlando drafted Paolo Banchero and with Markelle Fultz missing nearly the entire season). Suggs, to this point, has primarily been a play-finisher, not a playmaker.

When Suggs did have an opportunity to run things last season, he struggled. Suggs had 266 possessions as the pick-and-roll orchestrator, according to Synergy, and the team averaged just 0.90 points (in the 37th percentile). Now, Orlando’s offense was 22nd-best in the league (and they haven’t cracked the top-20 since 2015-2016), so this isn’t entirely an indictment of Suggs alone. But watching those P&R possessions makes two things abundantly clear.

First, Suggs didn’t have a lot of shake-and-bake to his dribbling. He still had his share of highlights, like nutmegging D’Angelo Russell in the open court: [video here]

But in the confines of the average pick-and-roll, Suggs almost always resorted to pure speed or power to beat his man and create an advantage. He didn’t quite have the handle or the patience to put a defender in jail and let the play develop, and he was too quick to pick up his dribble: [video here]

Second, Suggs lacked a pocket pass. Hitting a tough bounce pass to a rolling big is a more difficult skill than it seems — when was the last time you saw a pickup basketball player split defenders with a pass to a roller? — but it’s a baseline competency for NBA point guards. Suggs usually missed the ephemeral little windows that appeared, like here, where he needed to bounce the ball right in front of Wagner: [video here]

Or here, where there was a chance to feed Paolo for a layup, but he couldn’t quite get the angle right: [video here]

There’s something else about that second clip that’s worth mentioning: Jalen Suggs loves the jump pass.

Now, Caitlin Cooper and Tyrese Haliburton have largely erased the stigma against jump passes, but it’s still a high-risk, high-reward play for your non-generational passers. Suggs can get caught in the air with nowhere to go: [video here]

It shouldn’t surprise that Suggs turned it over on 14.7% of his pick-and-roll possessions, an alarmingly high number (and one that rose significantly in the playoff series against the Cavs, when Cleveland’s defense decimated seemingly every non-Banchero Magician).

It’s not all bad, though. Sometimes, Suggs used a jump pass to draw defenders’ attention and hit the rolling big from a different angle. He was far more comfortable with over-the-top alley-oops and bullet passes than surgically precise bouncers, but it’s a start: [video here]

A former quarterback who earned Minnesota’s Mr. Football distinction in high school, Suggs has plenty of passing vision. He’s constantly scanning downfield. I loved this inbounds play to beat the halftime buzzer. Watch how he directed Banchero where to go before launching a perfect spiral right over Banchero’s shoulder: [video here]

Befitting his football background, Suggs has ridiculous arm strength. Passes go whizzing by defenders’ ears like hypersonic gnats: [video here]

And Suggs doesn’t miss too many cutters, even when it takes an unusual delivery: [video here]

In other words, he sees the floor well. Turnovers are a problem, but Suggs has the physical and mental tools to make any pass at any time. (Scouts also believed Suggs to be a strong facilitator in college.) Given his work ethic and his improvements to the other parts of his game, there’s plenty of reason to believe he can grow into a proper point guard role with experience, reps, and health. But it will require work.

The health part bears more mentioning. Suggs' upward progression is all the more impressive given the Costco-sized list of injuries he’s accumulated, as he played in just 48 and 53 games in his first two seasons. Although he limped through 75 last season, Suggs rarely looked 100%. His effortful, physical playstyle is not conducive to clean bills of health, and he was left writhing in pain far too often for my liking.

There’s a lot of Alex Caruso in Suggs’ game, including the wear-and-tear aspect. The Magic are wise to keep his minutes in the high 20s.

Orlando can boost Suggs’ development, too. Signing sharp-shooting guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope to better space the floor will help. Finding shooting in other places (scarcely-seen second-year player Jett Howard? Impressive rookie Tristan da Silva? Wagner hitting the ocean from a boat?) will draw defenders out of the paint, making for easier reads. Anecdotally, it felt like Suggs’ best drop-offs to rollers came with an empty corner, simplifying his choices. More of this might help him find his comfort zone: [video here]

No, Suggs will never lead the league in dimes, and that’s okay. I’m not predicting a gargantuan leap in assists, and the Magic don’t need that, anyway. But to make a playoff run, to beat any of the East’s more-hyped teams, Orlando does need better playmaking and scoring to complement their voracious defense. Suggs (im)proving his point guard bonafides would be his best Magic trick yet.