Et Tu, Jonny?
by Sean Keeley on Apr 13, 2009 12:19 PM EDT
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Print"I'm coming back to Syracuse. There is no 'as of right now.' I'm coming back to Syracuse."
It's not often I gasp out loud when I stop by Syracuse.com. Usually if it happens its due to the the ridiculous front-page story about a man's fight to save his fish or something like that. But this time, it was even more shocking than that:
Syracuse University sophomore Jonny Flynn has signed with an agent, the Syracuse Post-Standard has learned.
Oofa. That hurts.
Flynn figures to be selected from No. 12 to No. 20 in the draft. Two websites; draftexpress.com and nbadraft.net, both have him going to the Detroit Pistons with the No. 15 pick. A third, mynbadraft.com, has Flynn going to the Atlanta Hawks with the No. 19 pick.
So that's it, Jonny? No more "let's wait and see how things look?" No more "I really want to come back, but..." I guess the "but" won. Not that I can blame him, and Jonny Flynn doesn't owe me anything, but, I would have rather just thought he was going pro from the get-go instead of grasping at the hope he would return.
So I guess Jonny's convinced he's going top ten. I mean, that's what Boeheim said it would take a couple weeks back:
"He'd have to be top 10," Boeheim said. "He came in and wants to stay and I do think he'll come back unless he's fairly high."
I always figured that if it looked like Jonny was staying, Paul would stay as well. When Harris very adamantly took the opportunity to leave and even stopped showing up at classes altogether, there was a nagging thought in the back of my mind that Paul knew Jonny wasn't coming back. Guess he did.
So that's it, folks. We appreciate all the top five and national championship contender thoughts, Sporting News, Spirts Illustrated, Big Lead et al. But we'll be settling back in the middle of the ranked pack now.
It's not terrible, but, it's certainly not what could have been.
Lesson to be learned here Syracuse fans, from now on, when one of our guys says he's going pro, agent or not, let him go the second he says it. Don't listen to anything else he says or how he qualifies it. He's not coming back.
Update: And, as if this story couldn't get any greasier, it's Leon Rose he's signing with. Thanks LeBron! Ryan Miller spoke to Jonny and Flynn said he hasn't signed yet but plans to later this week.
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this is the most depressing news for SU sports in a couple years
With Devo and Harris there was still that hope that Flynn could lead this team to a very promising year….without Flynn we are back to scoop at the point, Wesley and Rautins to compliment AO and Jackson……doesn’t scream devastating especially since we have no idea what we are getting out of the first two…….
by 'CuseConnection on Apr 13, 2009 12:36 PM EDT reply actions
A sad day
I wish the kid well, but man, that sucks. Thank God we’ve got Mad Dog Marrone to distract us for the time being, and into the fall (and I hope for good reasons).
"(BARF)" - Donovan McNabb, during his game winning drive against Virginia Tech in 1998
Bracketology
Has us as a #1 seed. As always, Joe Lunardi has done his homework.
Really, though, it is far from the end of the world. We will still be good next year, particularly given that many Big East teams are going to take a step back.
Maybe not #1 seed good, but better than people think. After all… the first Boeheim Final Four came after the departures of Addison, Alexis, and the Pearl. About as good a trio as we have ever had. Something to think about.
Unlike Green, I wish Flynn the best of luck. He left it all on the court for us and seemed to want to win as much as anyone in the building. That’s all we ask for…
We'll be good
but we’ll always wonder how much better we could have been
by Sean Keeley on Apr 13, 2009 12:58 PM EDT up reply actions
We still
will have the best front court in College basketball. Healthy AO, Ricky getting better every game, Wes and all the backups. All Scoop has to do is lob it inside.
Still Top 15.
Best frontcourt in college basketball?
Come on now.
~K
"As the governor of Louisiana once said, the only way Chris Kelsay can lose his job is if he got caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy."
Do NCAA championships have no meaning anymore?
honestly, if devo, paul, and jonny all came back it would be a travesty for us not to make it to the championship game because of all that talent. not to mention how all of their draft stock would most likely rise with a national championship under their belt.
No wonder
Jimmy B bolted and went on vacation…he said “F*ck it!” and left.
This hurts, I have that pain like I’ve just been grazed on the nuts.
But, imagine if an extremely unlikely group of freshmen and sophs. led the team to the title, that would be the ultimate middle finger back at flynn and greene (not that they deserve it, but you know what i’m talking about).
FML
so sad
If you need me for the rest of the week i will be sitting alone in the dark lisening to Air supply on infinite loop (http://tinyurl.com/yxm5wk)
by obscuredv1sions on Apr 13, 2009 1:59 PM EDT reply actions
This really sucks.
We coulda been somebody…we coulda been a contender.
Seriously, we were this close to being able to honestly believe a Final Four was a reasonable expectation.
Also, something none of us have talked about yet, but just dawned on me: Devo, Flynn and Harris were our best free-throw shooters. Wes should be decent, Scoop was ok if I remember correctly…but shouldn’t this be a concern now?
It is. It always is.
But our numbers were down this year mainly because of AO. Otherwise we had a surprisingly solid year at the line. It might be back to the days where every free throw is an adventure though.
Time to picket the NBA
I’m sorry if I’m sounding irrational in this fit of rage, but this one year rule has gone far enough. Jonny was not a one and done player, but now the rule has a domino effect, and it’s starting to feel that way. It’s time to get rid of the rule altogether and just let the guys go from high school again, one to two years of college doesn’t help their maturity. I know 5 years hasn’t helped mine, especially now. The NBA needs to stop making colleges their free minor leagues, because guess what? they have a minor leagues, the d-league, which the NBA should invest more in. If they don’t want to go to school, let them toil away in the D-League if they’re not the next Kobe or LeBron (dead). Without the rule, I doubt Jonny would do things differently, but it just makes more sense to me. Either that or do what the NFL does, make them stay 3 years in school or minimum age of 21 (if that’s seen as arbitrary, then so is the drinking age). A rule like that would give Jonny something to strive for next year because he could actually tell us that he wants to go to the NBA next year when he’s eligible and he wants to kick ass and take names in the NBA, and no one could find the least bit of fault in that. If you made it this far, thanks for reading, and yes I do need a hug.
by chicagocuse on Apr 13, 2009 3:39 PM EDT reply actions 1 recs
Totally agree
Pretending that the rule is helpful is stupid. Kids that would have left still leave early and fail to get a degree (at least in the short term), so the education argument is stupid. Beef up the D-League, treat it like a true farm system and get rid of the rule. Let kids who want to play get the scholarships.
BTW, I hope Flynn goes to a team that denies LeBron something important in some way, like an NBA title.
PS I’d give you a hug, but you already knew that. (nh)
Alright now listen up...
Stop this now. flynn is a talented player who is going to be a first round draft pick. It is incredibly selfish of us to want him to say no to the entire GDP of his hometown because we want him to come back so we can maybe win a title again maybe.
Good luck to you Johnny Flynn. Syracuse University will miss you, but we will be OK, because we are Syracuse University, and thats what we do. We win basketball games.
by The Dome Ranger on Apr 13, 2009 3:53 PM EDT reply actions
So we should be happy he's leaving?
As a sports fan we should say: “Yay, we are clearly not going to be as good as last year. This is awesome.”
Honestly, Flynn was going to make just as much, probably more money next year if he came back. We weren’t wanting him to say no to millions, we just wanted him to say “not yet.” I think we are completely within our sports fans rights (or whatever) being upset he is leaving. He is a great player who did not have to leave, so we will think about what could have been. If you aren’t upset, you aren’t a true SU fan. That’s not opinion, that’s fact. We might be OK, but the basketball team had the potential to be so much more than OK. None of us are wishing him ill will. He certainly laid everything he had on the floor for us and we can’t fault him for leaving. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t wish he wasn’t.
But obviously you think we will be peachy without him. You must have some inside info. Why should we feel OK about Jonny Flynn’s absence when his presence most likely would have made us a Final Four favorite? We will deal and most likely come to appreciate the new roster, but why should we be anything but disappointed right now?
Good god... a bunch of babies.
My interest is in us making the tournament every year. Whatever happens from there is anyone’s guess.
Newsflash… this team was not top 5. I don’t care what anybody said. While they COULD HAVE won a championship… we have had three teams in the final game in 20+ years and NONE of those teams was expected to. Conversely, we were the first team to lose as a #2 seed. Expectations lead to individualized play.
Flynn only rose in the NBA rankings because he finally started caring for the ball. Devo got better at it, but he and Harris were still sloppy. Less likely that either would have figured that out.
I am not happy he is leaving, but I am happy for him. And it is good for the program that the NBA wants our players. We took a kid who was not guaranteed an NBA career and got it for him.
Your interest is in us making the tournament?
But Flynn leaving doesn’t upset you? WTF? If you want to make tournaments, how could Flynn leaving not be a disappointment to you? Are you brain-dead? Sure, things change all the time. Teams move up and down. We ended off much better than we started (though to be fair I, along with many others, believed we were much better than predicted, so…)…but guess who was the typical preseason favorite to win it all? UNC….hmmm. Sometimes having more good players is a good thing. Maybe we will still win it all this year, who knows? But if you had to honestly assess where we stand now as opposed to where we would stand if Flynn came back would you put us at the exact same spot? No. There is no way you could. Flynn made us exponentially better and much better players than him have stayed at other schools. Now we venture into another year unsure of what we are capable of. The most important position on the floor is an uncertainity and the two most clutch players on the team are gone. Where will our heart come from? Who will give us our swagger? These questions will now take time to answer. Maybe the team figures them out, gets on track and makes the tournament. Maybe they make a deep run once they’re there. OR The team never quite gets all that figured out, the chemistry takes too long to come into focus and we get to enjoy another NIT 11 months from now. Considering where we finished this season, that’s not a welcome thought for this SU fan. So I vent about it on an SU blog where fellow SU fans can understand where I’m coming from. Well some fellow SU fans I guess.
I am a big Pistons fan
I would love to have Flynn! Rodney Stuckey hasn’t turned out to what he was supposed to be, and Dumars was an idiot trading Chauncey for AI.
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