More than a month into NBA free agency, point guard Malachi Flynn remains unsigned. There hasn’t been much news or rumors surrounding the 26-year-old free agent and potential landing spots for the 2024-25 season.
If someone saw him play on April 3, 2024, they would expect nearly every team in the league to have expressed some level of interest. On that night with the Detroit Pistons, Flynn dropped 50 points on the Atlanta Hawks. While his team lost, as Detroit often did last season, all the talk surrounded Flynn’s completely out-of-nowhere evening. That talk has long subsided, and now there seems to be no talk revolving around Flynn.
From 50-Point Scorer In April To Still Unsigned In August
Historic Evening From Flynn On April 3
In that April 3 outing last season, Flynn scored 17 points in the first half. Much more was to come in the second half. He exploded for 14 points in the third quarter and 19 in the fourth. In the 50-point performance, Flynn shot 18-25 from the field, 5-9 from three-point territory, and 9-12 from the foul line. He became just the third player in NBA history after Nick Anderson and Jamal Crawford to drop a 50-point outing coming off the bench.
Detroit was the third team that the six-foot-one guard played for in the 2023-24 season. The 29th pick in the 2020 NBA Draft, Flynn spent his first three full seasons with Toronto. After beginning 2023-24 with the Raptors, he was involved in two trades during the season where he was mostly an afterthought in those deals. In late December, he was shipped to the New York Knicks along with OG Anunoby with New York sending Toronto RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickley. He only played sparingly for the Knicks, averaging just 4.3 minutes over 14 games. A little more than a month later, Flynn was sent to Detroit along with Quentin Grimes in exchange for Bojan Bogdanovic and Alec Burks.
Did Malachi Flynn Have The Most Unexpected 50-Point Game Of All-Time?
Through 213 career regular season games, Flynn has a career scoring average of 5.5 points. His career-best seasonal average of 7.5 came as a rookie. Flynn had yet to prove that he can light up the scoreboard at the NBA level.
That made his 50-point game one of the shocking moments from last season. That was nearly double his previous career-best scoring output of 27 points on May 16, 2021. In the following game after he scored 50, Flynn went 0-12 from the field and scored just three off of free throws. In Flynn’s final six games of the season after the 50-pointer, he scored a total of 44 points.
Was Flynn the most unexpected player to ever score 50 in a game? He surely has a strong case of being so. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, his 5.2 career scoring average heading into that game was the lowest in NBA history for a 50-point scorer. So four months to the day of that career night, Flynn is without a NBA team for the 2024-25 season. He joins other unsigned point guards such as Markelle Fultz, Dennis Smith Jr., and Jordan Goodwin.
