Youth leads charge in Raptors’ bounce-back win over Nets

TSN Raptors Reporter

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TORONTO – Malachi Flynn found out he was getting an unexpected spot start in Brooklyn shortly before the rest of us did.   He had an inkling that his number might be called earlier on Monday when Fred VanVleet wasn’t in uniform for morning shoot around, but he didn’t know for sure until he showed up to Barclays Center a couple hours before tip off and saw his name on the whiteboard in the visiting locker room.   It was only the second start of the season for the Raptors’ sparingly used sophomore point guard, who went nearly two full weeks without playing in a single NBA game earlier this month.     “It feels good for sure,” Flynn said after logging 34 minutes and scoring 18 points, both season highs, in Toronto’s impressive bounce-back 133-97 win over the Nets. “But the thing about this league is you’ve gotta do it again.”   Even with the home team missing its three-best players, it was hard to feel great about the Raptors’ chances coming in. The knee issue that VanVleet’s been dealing with since before the all-star break was finally too much for him to play through. OG Anunoby spent the day in Los Angeles waiting to see a specialist for his fractured finger.   Meanwhile, the team was fresh off two of its worst losses of the campaign, back-to-back blowout defeats in Charlotte and Atlanta, leading to what Nurse called a longer than normal post-game meeting with his players on Saturday. Their lead on eighth-place Brooklyn for the top seed in the East’s very tight play-in race was down to one game.   “We’ve got to hone in, get off vacation, get focused and play,” Nurse said before the game.   With two of his veteran starters sidelined and the third, Pascal Siakam, under the weather,