ORLANDO, Fla. — Magic guard Jalen Suggs will be out indefinitely with a trochlea injury to his left knee, President of Basketball Operations Jeff Weltman announced Friday evening.

Suggs, who also is Orlando's third-leading scorer this season with a career-high average of 16.2 points per game, missed all the Magic's games in February and all but three games in January.

He had been ramping up his practices to try to get back on the court and had told the media he was making progress. But the team said Friday that Suggs was "experiencing discomfort." That led the team to put him through more medical evaluations and imaging, including a magnetic resonance imaging of the area, and that is when the injury was discovered, according to the team.

The trochlea is a groove at the end of the thigh bone at the kneecap through which the patella slides during motion and helps keep it from moving sideways.

The team now is trying to determine a treatment plan but said that it expects Suggs to make a full recovery.

Now his teammates have to try to recover to make a playoff run. In the games that Suggs has missed since the beginning of 2025, the Magic have a 7-17 record. They are struggling to find a consistent No. 3 scorer behind forwards Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner.

As of Friday night, Orlando is seeded No. 8 in the Eastern Conference playoff standings, which means they would need to play their way in to the final playoff group in the conference at the end of the regular season if they stayed in that spot. They are a half-game behind the Miami Heat, who are seventh, and 1.5 games ahead of the No. 9 Atlanta Hawks. The Detroit Pistons hold the No. 6 seed, sitting 4.5 games ahead of Orlando.

The Magic head into the weekend with a 29-32 record with 21 games to play. Last season, they finished the regular season with a 47-35 record and the No. 5 seeding in the Eastern Conference and entered the 2024-25 season with a goal of winning enough games to get to at least the No. 4 spot and claim hone-court advantage for the first round of the playoffs. Long-term injuries to most of the Magic’s top players have helped derail their season.

Suggs, who plays a physical game and made the NBA's second All-Defensive Team last season after being drafted No. 5 overall by the Magic in the 2021 draft, has only played more than 53 games in an 82-game season once in his four seasons in the league. Suggs, who will turn 24 in June, will be starting the first year of a five-year, $150.5 million contract extension next season that he signed in 2024.