Minnesota native Jalen Suggs is currently in his fifth NBA season with the Magic. Could his path from Minneheha Academy in Minneapolis to Gonzaga and then Orlando have gone differently? He recently revealed that he originally wanted to stay home and play for the Gophers.
Suggs is one of the best high school athletes to ever come out of Minnesota. He was a five-star, top-15 basketball recruit in the class of 2020, but he also won Minnesota Mr. Football as a senior. He held offers as a quarterback to Ohio State, Georgia, and his hometown Gophers, along with many others from top-tier programs.
“I remember super vivid conversations with my pop sophomore year… what’s the long-term route? I told him I wanted to stay home. My dream route would’ve been playing for the Gophers, football and basketball. I get to hold it down for the crib, and that would kinda be the journey,” Suggs said on a live-stream with social media personality N3on earlier this month.
Subscribe: Sign up to receive the free Gophers On SI newsletter
There haven’t been many notable athletes to play football and basketball at the Division I level. Keon Coleman at Michigan State and DeAndre Hopkins at Clemson are two examples, but they both became NFL wide receivers.
To emphasize the difference between NBA and NFL money, Suggs signed a five-year, $150 million contract extension with Orlando in October 2024. That contract alone surpasses Hopkins’ career earnings of $144 million, as one of the best NFL wide receivers of the last decade.
“As we kinda chopped it up, over the years, kinda with weighing risk and reward, he’s (his dad) giving me insight into what the journey would look like for me. It’s just hard to ignore, a lot of people high up in these front offices, scouts and whatnot, telling my parents, you know, keep him on track. And you have the opportunity to make generational wealth. That was always our goal,” Suggs said.
Gonzaga obviously had different things to offer than Minnesota from a basketball perspective. He averaged 14.4 points, 5.3 rebounds, and 4.5 assists per game en route to leading the Bulldogs to a national runner-up finish in 2021. If his ultimate goal was to reach the NBA and earn a second contract, he has done just that.
How close was Suggs to seriously considering Minnesota? We’ll never know for sure, but it’s fun to think about how different things would look if he chose to stay home and play two sports for the Gophers.
