An avid follower of college basketball for most of my life, I nonetheless do not have a particular team I automatically root for more than others. (I am, however, partial to the Big East, because that's the conference I grew up watching.) Rather, I grow attached to certain teams and players that play a style I like. My favorite college team, for example, was the 1994-95 Virginia Cavaliers squad that Junior Burrough and Harold Deane led to the Elite 8. My list of favorite college players includes bona fide stars such as Stephon Marbury (who in his lone year at Georgia Tech teamed with Drew Barry to form the most entertaining collegiate backcourt I've ever seen) as well as role players like Josh Pace, the sixth man on the Syracuse team that won the 2003 national title.
Jonny Flynn is, hands down, my favorite college player of all-time.
The Flynn bandwagon is rather crowded these days, but I can safely say that if I wasn't the one who chartered it, I was among the first to climb aboard. After an outstanding sophomore season, Flynn declared for the NBA Draft as a projected first-rounder with a shot at the late lottery. He shot up draft boards due to his performance in pre-draft workouts, including registering the best vertical leap (40") of anyone in the 2009 draft class. He was picked sixth overall by the Minnesota Timberwolves, and then performed so well at the Las Vegas Summer League that he was a legitimate contender for MVP. Add all of this up, and he's a pretty popular player these days.
However, I fell in love with Flynn well before that, the first time I ever watched him, in his second collegiate game at Syracuse, against St. Joseph's in the second round of the Preseason NIT. The previous evening, he had scored 28 points in his debut. Against St. Joe's, he made just one field goal, but it happened to be the game-winner.
That's now what caught my eye, though. What caught my eye was a pass he made on the fast break to Donte' Greene (now of the Sacramento Kings). I've never been able to find it on YouTube, surely because it wasn't flashy enough to earn highlight reel status. Here, however, is part of what I wrote after the game:
Flynn had the ball on a 3-on-2 break, and as he reached the top of the key, he glanced right, where Greene was fading out to the three point line. Flynn then crossed over to his left and put his head down, taking the ball hard to the bucket with a St. Joseph's defender on his right hip.
As he got to the basket, instead of throwing up a difficult left-handed layup or trying to draw contact, Flynn wrapped a pass around his defender. Seemingly out of
nowhere, Greene appeared, catching the ball and jamming it it one giant stride. And the foul.
Watching the replay, I could see that Flynn's vision of that side of the court was completely obstructed by the defender. He couldn't possibly have seen Greene cut to the basket -- I'm not even sure Greene initiated his cut before Flynn released the ball. Flynn made the pass with the understanding that Greene would be crashing the
boards in anticipation of his shot. Either that or -- and this is where it gets interesting -- he threw it to lead Greene where he wanted him to go, weighting the pass perfectly as to catch Greene in stride.This is not the stuff of normal point guards. It's not even the stuff of very, very good
point guards. It's the kind of pass I haven't seen a college player make since 1994, the year Jason Kidd left California for the NBA. Yes, it was that good. I'm not saying Flynn's the player Kidd was and is, but he's clearly got a special understanding of the game. I'm excited to see what else he's got in store for us.
It turns out that he had a lot in store for us. For those of you unfamiliar with his game, he's a dimunitive point guard who is deceptively strong. He's not a sniper, but you can't leave him open, either: While he made just a third of his three-point attempts in two years at Syracuse, he hit 7 of 12 from behind the pro arc in Vegas. He's a slasher with the athleticism to finish spectacularly, and he absorbs contact well for someone of his stature. As I've mentioned, he has extraordinary court vision, and distributes with the appropriate amount of flair and enthusiasm, falling just short enough of showboating that the observer gets pleasure out of the joy with which he plays.
Perhaps most importantly for his career prospects, he is a true leader and warrior. In the epic sextuple-overtime victory over Connecticutin last year's Big East tournament, Flynn played 67 of a possible 70 minutes, converted all 16 of his free throw attempts, and led his team to victory despite the fact that it never held a lead in any of the first five overtimes. And in the final game of his college career, an 84-71 loss to Oklahoma in the Sweet 16, he was really the only Syracuse player to play well, despite suffering a painful back injury in the first half while trying to draw a charge from Blake Griffin.
His career is already off to a great start, despite the fact that he hasn't played a single meaningful minute. Flynn has been put into about as difficult a situation as you can put a rookie point guard in. The Wolves picked him right after they selected Spanish sensation Ricky Rubio, and could only watch and listen as Wolves president of basketball operations aggressively wooed Rubio (who eventually decided to stay in Spain for at least the next two years, to the dismay of many Minnesota fans). While Kahn expressed a vision of a Rubio/Flynn backcourt, few actually think such a pairing would be effective, and the two play the same position. It's not often that the sixth overall pick has to fight for playing time with another rookie, but Flynn never spoke out and let his play in Vegas do the talking. In fact, Flynn went so far as to say that he wished Rubio were joining the team this year, though because those comments came after Rubio's decision to stay abroad, it's hard to evaluate their sincerity. Flynn was similiarly positive after the Wolves signed former Bucks point guard Ramon Sessions - a rising star to some, a young guy who has maxed his potential to others - to a four-year deal, though the fact that Sessions played some shooting guard in Milwaukee means that Flynn's playing time likely won't suffer as a result.
How good can Flynn be? He doesn't have the size to be as effective as Chicago's Derrick Rose is going to the basket, and Rose is the rare player who combines that kind of size, strength, and scoring ability with a point-guard's mentality. Flynn's ceiling probably falls short of young point guards like Rose, New Orleans' Chris Paul, and Utah's Deron Williams - but not by much. I think he'll turn out to be the best point guard in his draft class, a talented group that includes Rubio, Sacramento's Tyreke Evans (#4 overall), and Milwaukee's Brandon Jennings (#10).
As excited as I am for the upcoming Celtics season, I'm equally as excited for Flynn's professional career to start. I am going to watch as many Wolves games as I can this year, and while I won't give them the treatment I give the Cs, expect fairly regular updates and analysis of Flynn's play in these pages.
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