Raptors' Flynn feeling more confident as Rajakovic’s patience pays off

Boston — Malachi Flynn couldn’t believe it either. 

The fourth year Toronto Raptors point guard was having something like an out-of-body experience: sure, that looked like him on the floor, doing basketball things, but who was the guy turning the ball over in bunches, throwing passes to nowhere, getting his pocket picked and playing scared? 

“That’s not me at all,” said Flynn on Friday as he tried to explain a nightmarish start to what is a pivotal season for the fourth-year guard. 

But it was, unfortunately. The film — and the accompanying numbers — weren’t pretty. Flynn was a ghastly -39 in forty minutes spread out over Toronto’s first four games. He had more turnovers (six) than assists. He made two turnovers in just over nine minutes of floor time in the season opener against Minnesota and three in 13 minutes against Philadelphia. The one game he didn’t cough up the ball was against Chicago in the second game of the season, but Flynn struggled so mightily — Toronto was -14 in Flynn’s four minutes in the first quarter — that he didn’t see the court again that game.

It's a team game and assigning blame to one player via a stat like plus/minus is often not appropriate, but when you’re a point guard and giving the ball away, not scoring and otherwise looking out of sorts, sometimes the sneaker fits. 

And at this instance the conclusions seemed pretty clear: the Raptors bench was struggling, Flynn foremost among them, and given how much difficulty the personable 25-year- old has had carving out a regular spot in the rotation in the three years since he was drafted 29^th overall in 2021, it was fair to wonder if his NBA career was beginning to slip through his fingers. 

But an interesting thing happened as Flynn was in the midst of the worst possible start to the season: his coach spoke to him, encouraged him and most importantly, stuck with him. Before each game Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic lists for the team the 10 players he plans to use that night, and Flynn’s name was always among them. If anything, as Flynn’s struggles mounted, his playing time increased. 

“I told Malachi, 'you’re in the rotation,'” Rajakovic told me as the Raptors were wrapping up practice on campus at Harvard in preparation for their game Saturday against the Boston Celtics, an early-season powerhouse in the Eastern Conference. “Don’t be afraid. Give me this: a baseline of your defence and effort and playing the right way, and you’ll be on the court.”

Sure enough Flynn has been on the floor for 15 minutes in each of the Raptors' past three games, been a part of significantly positive lineups in wins over San Antonio and Dallas and played well in a losing effort against Philadelphia as well. He’s made five threes on nine attempts, counted nine assists and — perhaps most significantly — made just one turnover.

That guy? That guy he recognized. 

“I've never really turned the ball (over very often) and I think the first four games I probably averaged like two and a half turnovers and even when I'm playing 30 minutes, I don't really do that,” Flynn said. “So it was definitely just the realization, looking at the film, like, ‘you're not being yourself.' So it was nothing to take from that except just be yourself. And then after that everything will kind of come and I think it's starting to.”

The Raptors don’t need their back-up point guard to play like an all-star starter. They just need him to play hard, smart and reliably, and after his early season hiccups, Flynn has delivered. 

You could understand why Flynn might have been jittery to start the season or putting a little extra pressure on himself. It’s no exaggeration to say that as a pending free agent if he didn’t find a way to show the Raptors and the rest of the league that he could fill a role on an NBA roster this season, he could be playing in Europe a year from now. 

One of the priorities Rajakovic set out coming into the season — and one of the pledges that helped him win the Raptors coaching search — was his commitment to play an extended rotation with an emphasis on finding opportunities for developing young players. Over the past two seasons, former Raptors head coach Nick Nurse had played his starters more minutes than any other coach in the league. There’s an argument that no one’s development was as adversely affected as Flynn’s. Then again, the flip side could also be true: Nurse would have loved to play Flynn more but doing so meant jeopardizing his chances of winning, so he didn’t.

Flynn’s early struggles put Rajakovic’s commitment to the test. But the new coach doubled down, even going so far as forwarding Flynn an article about NFL great Tom Brady, and how the seven-time Super Bowl champion managed his years at Michigan as a third-stringer or in New England as a back-up early in his career. The message: maximize the opportunities you do have by controlling your attitude, preparation and effort, and the rest will fall into place. 

Only time will tell if opportunity has been the missing piece in Flynn’s development. After all, proving your value in sporadic bursts of playing time is perhaps the hardest magic trick of all to pull off in the NBA. You play less but are somehow expected to play better, or else you don’t get to play more. Many talented players have failed to crack the code, or stumbled when their moment finally came. Flynn has not played at all in 92 games over the past three years and had countless more where his minutes could be counted on the fingers one hand. 

“It's hard to catch the rhythm, per se, and I think basketball is a game of rhythm for everybody, especially skilled players. You kind of need a rhythm out there to feel good,” Flynn said. “And I think that consistency of knowing when I'm gonna come in and getting a consistent time, it just allows you to be more comfortable out there. 

“I think the first couple of games I was still kind of like hesitant, not being assertive. But I feel like the last maybe three or four games — and not even going off makes or misses, just going off how I'm feeling and how I'm playing — I think I’m a lot more comfortable and playing confident.”

Presuming Rajakovic’s rotation remains intact against Boston, it will be just the second time in the last three seasons that Flynn will have played at least 15 minutes in six straight games off the bench. Outside of the ‘Tampa Tank’ in his rookie year, when the Raptors were playing lineups designed to increase their lottery odds rather than win games. 

Arguably no one needed a clean slate with a new coaching staff more than Flynn, which made his early struggles all the more difficult to watch. As is so often the case, the root of his problems, he realized, was trying to play too perfectly in an effort to reward his new coach’s faith in him. 

“I think it was kind of just trying to do the right thing, trying to run the play. But at the end of the day, it's basketball,” Flynn said. “You got somebody picking up the full court, you just gotta go by them. You can’t worry about trying to run the play. And I think that was a little bit of what I was trying to do.”

It’s telling that Flynn finding his footing has been a popular development among his teammates. While every organization wants their draft picks to succeed, it’s a safe bet that if Flynn had been anything other than a positive presence in the locker-room and off-the-floor, he wouldn’t be here for his fourth season, getting one more crack. 

Struggling to find playing time while on a disjointed development curve is one thing, being a distraction along the way typically gets you a ticket out of town, and in Flynn’s case, no one wants to see that. He was a favourite of VanVleet’s the past two seasons as the two under-sized point guards had lockers beside one another. This season, Flynn and starting point guard Dennis Schröder always seem to be enjoying themselves in end-of-practice shooting competitions. He’s worked hard in the off-season with his brother-in-law, a track-and-field coach at the University of Washington, to add power and explosiveness, and he diligently hits the weight room every night after games to maintain his gains. 

In all, he’s checking every box when it comes to being a well-regarded teammate. So, when Flynn came off the bench to contribute eight points, four assists, four rebounds and a pair of timely threes in the Raptors' big win over Dallas on Wednesday, his teammates couldn’t have been happier for him. 

“Malachi's been grinding, he’s been grinding a lot. It’s amazing to see him get the opportunity,” said Raptors veteran Chris Boucher, who himself has managed to stay positive as his spot in the rotation has fluctuated. “It’s not like we didn’t know he was able to do it, but for him to actually get minutes and actually produce, you can see that for four years he wasn’t just there, he was learning and getting better.

“Now that he’s getting on the floor, I think it’s amazing to see the decisions he’s making but also how good he’s getting on the fly.”

On paper, the fit between Flynn and the Raptors should be perfect. Toronto is woefully thin at point guard — Schröder is the only one in the organization with a lengthy NBA track record — and Flynn profiles as the kind of player who can capably manage a second unit for 15 to 20 minutes a game along with the odd spot start. There’s a job and an NBA future there if he can take it. 

In the early going, it looked like he might fumble it, but with a little patience, a little calm and some trust, it looks like Flynn’s best basketball could be right ahead of him.