Malachi Flynn Came Off The Bench To Score 50 Points Against The Hawks

Unusual things happen in the NBA in April. As the regular season is winding down and teams understand what their playoff hopes look like, you can sometimes see things that come from out of absolutely nowhere. For example: During Wednesday night’s game between the Detroit Pistons and the Atlanta Hawks, a reserve guard for the Pistons had the night of his life.

Malachi Flynn, whose career-high entering the night was 27 points and whose season-high was 17, was nothing short of brilliant against Atlanta, going for 50 points on 18-for-25 shooting with six rebounds, five assists, and four steals in 34 minutes of work. Thirty-three of his 50 points came in the second half, while he scored 19 points in the fourth quarter.

While there have been some monstrous scoring performances in the league this season, Flynn joined a pretty exclusive list of players who hit the 50-point mark in one game during the 2023-24 campaign. Additionally, he joined Jamal Crawford in becoming the second player to score 50 points in a game off the bench this century.

Flynn entered Wednesday’s game averaging 5.8 points in 11.6 minutes per game since he joined the Pistons in February via a trade with the New York Knicks. He started this year as a member of the Toronto Raptors, which took him 29th overall in the 2020 NBA Draft, but got sent to the Knicks in December as part of the OG Anunoby trade.

Unfortunately for Flynn and the Pistons, this effort came in a loss, as Atlanta came out on top 121-113 to clinch a berth in the Play-In Tournament.