Orlando Magic Player Jalen Suggs Praises God for Team Success
By Movieguide® Contributor
On Wednesday night, the Orlando Magic secured their eighth consecutive win, putting the team second in the Eastern Conference behind the Boston Celtics.
In just his third season in the NBA, Jalen Suggs has made his mark and remains a pivotal player for the Magic.
After the Magic secured the win against the Washington Wizards on Wednesday, Suggs praised God for the opportunity to play with the team.
“I’m so glad that God has placed me in this city with this group,” he declared.
Before the NBA, Suggs played college basketball at Gonzaga.
“At Gonzaga, Suggs was an athletic, electric point guard who took advantage of every square foot of the court, whether he was blocking a shot at the rim, like he did against UCLA’s Cody Riley in the Final Four, or sneaking behind an unsuspecting ball-handler to poke the ball away in the backcourt. Offensively, he played with an attacking style — 49.8 percent of his shots came at the rim, per hoop-math.com — and he found ways to get his skilled teammates involved,” the NCAA wrote.
In a 2021 interview with Faith on the Field, Suggs talked about his relationship with God and how he needed to trust God while playing ball in the NCAA COVID bubble.
“I remember during the tournament; it was really hard. It was hard for me because all my family was there,” he said. “And I have friends that came down, I couldn’t go see any of them. We were stuck in the bubble. And it had just been a long season. You know, for as many ups there were, and good moments are equally as many bad ones.”
He continued, “And I think just being faithful, you know, being confident and strong-minded, and being rooted, and to be myself in my relationship, where God helped me through all of it. It was a challenging year, you know, I’ll be the first one to say. [We] went through many ups and downs, but my relationship with God got me through it, honestly.”
No matter how tough things got for Suggs and his team, he always gave the glory back to God.
“It was just a reminder, a good reminder, you know, how good and how great, really great God is,” he concluded. “So yeah, I had to put that out there. Because that’s the only thing I kept saying after that moment was just how good God was.”
Suggs was drafted No. 5 overall in the 2021 NBA Draft.
After he found out he was headed to Orlando, Suggs tweeted a video. He included Hebrews 11:1 in the caption, which reads, “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.”
