Jonny Flynn is only 23 years old, and has just two NBA seasons to his name. He has yet to play in a system that suits him, or for a coach with a legitimate ability to elevate the play of his roster. He was drafted into an unfavorable situation, undercut before he even began by his general manager, and thrown on the floor with largely inferior players. His underwhelming production has every caveat in the world, as thus far virtually nothing has gone right in the basketball sphere immediately surrounding the former No. 6 overall pick.
So why is it that, even when armed with rationalizations aplenty, it’s so difficult to shake off the unmistakable gloom that seems to come part and parcel with Flynn’s career trajectory?
The simplest answer I can conjure: Flynn is a player with a good feel for the ball, but not for the game. There’s demonstrable skill in the way Flynn handles and passes, but his play nonetheless seems oddly discordant with the way team basketball functions. It’s not even a matter of being a ball hog; something about the success in Flynn’s game is just slightly out of phase with our reality, as if he were a star in some distant dimension but simply hasn’t translated his game to ours.
And that’s the simplest answer I can conjure.
To watch Flynn is to see talent, but there’s an undeniable peculiarity in his moves and decision making. He has a good handle, but doesn’t really create quality shots. He’s quick, but remains incapable of getting to the rim. He has good form, but shoots below the league average from virtually all of Hoopdata’s preset ranges. Everything he should do well turns in on itself, and though the situation in Minnesota earns Flynn one hell of an asterisk, there remains an unshakable feeling that he may never quite figure things out.
That’s a shame to say, because it’s hard to find a more charismatic player; Flynn is sincere and natural, with a confidence that puts anyone near him at ease. Yet as easy as it should be to find reasons to like Flynn on the court, here we are, contemplating the possibility that even with considerable growth, he may never lock into the role and responsibilities his talent level had always hinted he would be able to take.
Flynn does have time on his side, and he has a clear love of the game and a desire to improve. He’s laced with intangibles, but we have yet to see them make an actual on-court impact. Intangibles are supposed to live in an incalculable space, but Flynn’s supposed best attributes evade even the qualitative. He says all the right things after the game and displays the perfect attitude, but whether his team benefits from his presence on the court is a matter up for debate.
Flynn will nonetheless compete for every second he can get on an NBA court, even though his current situation (Flynn will likely serve as a third point guard for a pretty solid Rockets team) and slight projected playing time seem strangely appropriate. He could grow into a role as a backup, but for now that kind of position should not just be gifted to him. Botched defense (he gives up 0.31 more points per defensive possession than he manages to score per offensive possession used, per Synergy Sports), inefficient scoring (see above; plus, his shooting percentages went from bad to worse in his second season), and unimpressive playmaking (just 5.8 assists per 36 minutes despite playing for the third fastest team in 2009-2010 and the league’s fastest team in 2010-2011) have ensured that much. Flynn has lost whatever built-in capital is to be had for young prospects, and will be forced to earn back everything he’d previously just been given. He’ll no longer benefit from his draft status or repute, but will be required to actually produce in whatever role Houston has for him.
Though he was given considerable playing time, Flynn has yet to show anything at all to coaches and general managers in search of reasons to believe. He hasn’t even found a way to appease NBA fans who, really, don’t ask for all that much. The game’s die-hards will cling to players who offer them even a glimpse of what joys may come, but Flynn toils away without so much as a spark.
It doesn’t have to stay that way, and in the NBA world, things so rarely do. Players evolve constantly, and Flynn would need but a subtle shift to morph into a solid player. Yet for now, his game is filled with shortcomings, to the point that manufacturing any kind of real hope for his career is an actual struggle. Giving up on a player of Flynn’s ilk isn’t even a reasonable option so early in his career; it would be both cruel and unwise to put him in a box so early, as even now his nebulous potential is worth too much to cast off. Some NBA players simply develop later than others, or rely on an the alignment of factors in a specific situation to grant them a rebirth. Both of those outcomes are possible for Flynn...but not predictable.
That’s an important distinction. Maybe Flynn will pan out better than anyone ever expected, but if that’s the case, he gave no indication of it -- not with film, not with numbers, and not even with the demonstration of specific in-game skills. We’ve seen Jonny Flynn only as a struggling NBA point guard, and at this point, it’s hard to even imagine him as anything else.