Growing up in West Chester, Pa., TJ Malone was quickly enamored by basketball. The quick-cutting, intricate play designs conceived through screens and, more importantly, the ability to size up a defender and take them one-on-one in isolation excited a young Malone.

When Malone was a child, Allen Iverson was a basketball icon in Philadelphia. 

Each basketball dribble from Iverson's fingertips was calculated to ultimately lead to his dagger: the crossover, a simple dribbling move that every player could complete, but one that he perfected and intensified. The move that inveigled defenders to reach into an empty cookie jar and allured onlookers into fandom. 

Basketball was Malone’s first passion. As a dual-sport athlete, he planned to pursue it at Division 3 Amherst College while also playing lacrosse.

However, after earning a scholarship offer to Penn State late in his senior year at The Haverford School, his mindset flipped from playing at Amherst to honing in on one craft with the Nittany Lions: his second love, lacrosse. 

Malone is guided by his pursuit of working to become the best. Whether it be the best teammate, leader, lacrosse player, son or friend, Malone strives to give his all in every aspect of life.

However, the pursuit of becoming his best self nearly prevented the 2024 PLL Rookie of the Year from ever stepping foot on a professional lacrosse field. 

Disappointment breeds hunger

Malone burst onto the scene as a Penn State freshman in 2019 on a team featuring future PLL stars Grant Ament and Mac O’Keefe. Their squad made it to the NCAA semifinals, losing to TD Ierlan and the eventual national champion Yale Bulldogs. 

The loss to Yale and the subsequent cancellation of the 2020 season after seven games because of the coronavirus pandemic left Malone with a deep hunger to become great. But the 2021 season proved to be little more than a bland appetizer. Penn State went 4-7, and Malone’s numbers weren’t crazy by his standards – 43 points (25G, 18A) in 11 games.

Following the disappointing ‘21 campaign, Malone wanted to get better. Not just in one facet of the sport – better at everything possible. Driven by a vehement hunger, Malone’s focus fastened on 2022. 

“I was working out super hard because I wanted to take this opportunity to be the best, to get into the best shape possible [and] be the best lacrosse player I could be,” Malone explained. 

The lefty attackman spent countless hours hitting the wall, working on his dodges and grinding in the gym. But Malone’s intensity in his training created a problem – a significant one at that.

“All of that summer, I was working out so hard, and my hips just started to hurt, and I didn’t know what was wrong,” Malone said. 

The issue?

“My bones were basically rubbing on each other in my hips.”

They were rubbing because Malone tore his labrum in both hips, resulting in the immense pain he was feeling. At a basic level, when someone tears a labrum, the femoral head (the ball of the thigh bone) and the acetabulum (the socket in the pelvis) rub against each other, deteriorating the bone structure in the hip. 

However, Malone didn’t know that at first. 

“I got back to school in 2022 in the fall,” he said, “[and] I was told to rehab it and it would heal.” 

Malone began the rehab process, and his hips felt a “little bit better.” He was biking and stretching with more care and emphasized spending time to ensure his hips felt good.

But they “never really healed.” Ultimately, Malone was left at a fork in the road; one path led to more bodily destruction, the other to a solution. So, he began seeking help from outside Penn State. 

A surprise diagnosis

Eventually, after researching hip specialists and a solution for his pain, Malone chose Dr. Benjamin Domb, a specialized hip surgeon at the American Hip Institute in Chicago. Domb specializes in sports medicine and hip arthroscopy. 

Domb shared a message that altered Malone’s career. 

“[Dr. Domb] did MRIs and testing and was like, ‘Hey, your hips are very torn in your labrums, and you’re going to need surgery to repair them unless you want to stop playing, and that way you can just rehab. But I don’t think you can play this game without getting surgery,’” Malone said. 

The diagnosis was a shock to Malone, who wanted to help right the course of Penn State’s sinking ship after 2021.

In Malone’s case, his tears stemmed from a femoroacetabular impingement, also known as a “cam impingement.” Cam impingements are not uncommon for elite athletes.  

“A cam impingement rubs against the socket and causes tearing of the labrum, which is the ring around the edge of the socket,” Domb explained. “This is extremely common in athletes, and to a degree, the better the athlete, the more likely that they have impingement because great athletes put a lot of stresses on their bones.”

Athletes who specialize in lacrosse suffer cam impingements differently from football and hockey players. This is not because lacrosse is less safe or worse for the body but because the athletic stance in lacrosse causes tears in different places than a skating stride in hockey or vertical and lateral football movements. 

The injury is rooted in sports specialization, and it takes six to eight months to heal from and years to develop. 

“The impingement usually develops in our growth years, so somewhere between 10 and 15 years old,” Domb said. “It often doesn’t manifest right away as pain because the labrum handles the deformity for a while. Between 10 and 15, we start to be quick enough and strong enough to put a lot of force on the bones while the bones are still not matured.”

Malone’s stress from playing basketball and lacrosse from childhood – two sports with similar movement patterns from cutting to crossover dribbles and split dodges – slowly pierced the cartilage ring, disabling it through time and mutilating it enough to tear.

The uncertainty from not knowing about the injury, coupled with the setback from the surgery, stung Malone. He wound up missing the entire 2022 season, during which Penn State won just three of its 14 games. 

“It was really hard mentally because I felt like I was letting the team down,” he said. “Even though I had some serious injury, it wasn’t like I had torn my ACL, and everyone knew it was torn.”

Everything Malone had worked for and toward seemed lost in a stygian cavern of nothingness. Rather than working to perfect his craft and become great, he was stuck sitting in a wheelchair and waiting to recover. 

It was an entree that felt rushed, lacking both finesse and balance. It left a sour aftertaste that lingered far too long, following the tasteless shortcomings of the 2021 season.

“He struggled physically and mentally to be away from the game … the game that he loves so much,” Penn State head coach Jeff Tamborini said.

All Malone could do was stay the course and continue believing in himself and his process.

The road back

Although Iverson was a Philadelphia icon in Malone's youth, Lower Merion’s Kobe Bryant was the attackmen’s Philly hero. Bryant’s mindset toward work helped fuel Malone in his darkest days. 

“I was biking for two hours a day, very low resistance, just to get the hips moving, which kept me going [and] kept me motivated because I was like, ‘I can bike for two hours a day,’” Malone said. “Like, that’s better than nothing.” 

Like Bruce Wayne in “The Dark Knight Rises,” he was imprisoned by his injury in “The Pit.” He slowly, mentally and physically battled adversity each day to make a grand return to his Gotham: Penn State. 

After returning to the field in 2023, Malone recorded 150 points (81G, 69A) in his final 31 college games over two seasons, catapulting his name into the forefront of lacrosse talk ahead of the 2024 PLL College Draft.

However, he slipped. He fell to the third round of a draft tabbed “The Greatest Draft” because of the quantity and quality of talent in it. The Maryland Whipsnakes took him with the 17th overall pick. 

Malone’s pursuit of greatness, rather than his fear of falling, gave him the adrenaline he needed to rise from the depths of “The Pit.” That rise has been limitless – a surge that let him do something all kids dream of: play the sport with some of his heroes.

“It’s just pretty cool knowing that, all the ups and downs playing lacrosse all these years, to finally make it to the highest level that guys that you’ve dreamed about and watch highlights over and over again, that you actually get to play alongside with, which is pretty cool,” Malone said before playing his first PLL game.

And Malone didn’t just play alongside the heroes of his youth. He dominated with them. He recorded 37 points (19G, 18A) en route to winning Rookie of the Year, earning second-team All-Pro honors and helping lead the Whipsnakes to the Cash App Championship Game. In December, he was voted the 14th-best player in the PLL by his peers in The 2024 Players Top 50. 

“A couple of years ago, I had three hip surgeries, and I didn’t even know if I was going to play the game again. Doctors were telling me to hang up the cleats, and I’m just so thankful to be here,” Malone said during his Rookie of the Year acceptance speech. “The path that God has put me on, it was a struggle, and I wanted to quit, but I had someone like Grant [Ament] in my corner telling me, ‘Just power through and good things will come.’” 

Malone’s recent life has been filled with setbacks, but his journey culminated in the flavorful dessert that was his superb rookie season. A dessert with enough grandeur to make the past distant. His path has been defined by the unwavering mindset he learned from his childhood hero, Kobe Bryant, and filled with moments of resilience that will inspire the next generation of lacrosse players.

“Knowing what he’s gone through and the resilience that he has shown to get back to this spot to play at the level that he’s playing, it’s just remarkable,” Tambroni said. “He really is an inspiration.”