Paolo Banchero Has a Low-Grade High Ankle Sprain: What the Magic Did Not Say About His Timeline
Orlando announced Saturday that an MRI on Paolo Banchero’s right ankle showed a low-grade high ankle sprain. The team said he will undergo further testing and evaluation, and that his status will be updated as appropriate.
What the Magic did not announce was a timeline. That absence is doing most of the work in this story.
Where the Four to Six Weeks Came From
ESPN’s Shams Charania reported that Banchero will miss multiple weeks, and separately noted that players who suffer high ankle sprains often miss four to six weeks. That second part is context about the injury type. It is not a projection for Banchero, and it is not a number Orlando put out.
The distinction matters, because plenty of headlines collapsed the two into one. The Magic have committed to nothing beyond multiple weeks, and the words “low-grade” are in the diagnosis for a reason.
For scale: four weeks from Friday would cost him 13 games. Six weeks would cost 18.
It Happened Twice in the Same Game
Banchero hurt the ankle in the first quarter of Friday’s 115-93 loss to Minnesota, and a teammate caused it. “It was a play in the first quarter where Desmond [Bane] fell into me,” he said.
He kept playing. With 8:44 left in the third quarter he came down awkwardly going for a rebound, grabbed the ankle and walked off. He returned late in the period, missed all four shots he attempted after that, and did not play the fourth. He finished with 14 points, six rebounds and five assists in 26 minutes.
The detail that should worry Orlando is where the sprain is. “Most of all my ankle sprains have always been to the outside, so this is kind of foreign to me,” Banchero said. “So a little scary in that way.”
He did not travel to New York and will miss Sunday’s game against the 0-2 Knicks.
This Keeps Happening to Him
Banchero is 23 and turns 24 on Nov. 12, during this absence. He was the first pick of the 2022 draft, and the extension he agreed to in July 2025 is worth $239 million over five years and as much as $287 million with escalators. It pays him $41.2 million this season, the first year of the deal.
He has also now missed significant time in three consecutive seasons. A torn right oblique in October 2024 cost him 34 games. A left groin strain last season cost him 10 more. Orlando went 7-3 during that second absence, which is the one encouraging precedent available here.
The timing stings because he had opened this season as well as he ever has. He put up 35 points on 10-of-12 shooting with 10 assists against Atlanta in the opener, and through two games was averaging 24.5 points while shooting 69.9 percent.
What Orlando Does Now
The Magic are 0-2 under first-year head coach Sean Sweeney, who replaced Jamahl Mosley in June. Franz Wagner and Desmond Bane will shoulder more of the offense, and Tristan da Silva is the likeliest addition to the starting lineup after taking Banchero’s minutes on Friday.
They are thin elsewhere too. Noah Penda is out with a partially torn hamstring into mid-November, and Anthony Black has been dealing with an ankle sprain of his own.
Orlando gave up multiple first-round picks and two rotation players for Bane in June 2025 to build something around Banchero and Wagner. That group has barely been on the floor. Banchero, Wagner and Jalen Suggs have played 25 games together as a trio across the last two seasons.
Until that number grows, nobody can say whether this roster works. Orlando keeps getting asked the question and keeps not being allowed to answer it.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
