Alijah Martin Morning After: Cultural Win, Bigger Role

Saturday’s morning after gave the night its second story. Martin spoke about the knee surgery behind the breakout, Jamal Shead and Darko Rajakovic put words on what the win meant inside the room, the NBA Cup standings settled with Toronto back in the race, and one question now follows the Raptors home: whether a guard who played 49 minutes all season before Friday has forced a real role on Monday night.

How to watch: Memphis Grizzlies at Toronto Raptors, Monday, November 9, 2026, 7:30 p.m. ET at Scotiabank Arena
TV (Canada): Sportsnet
Stream: Sportsnet+

Alijah Martin Career High, In His Own Words

The detail that reframed the night arrived after it. Martin’s progress this season was slowed by off-season knee surgery, and he told Sportsnet’s Michael Grange what that cost him: “I don’t want to get emotional, but when you love the game and it just gets stripped away from you, from like, things you can’t control, you just hit rock bottom. So I’m grateful, honestly. I’m just going to keep my head down, stay humble and just keep pushing.” His mother Tina was in the building in Milwaukee, where she has family, and Martin admitted that mattered: “Honestly I didn’t know, but I knew I was about to play hard because my mom was coming to the game.”

Shead, who started in Quickley’s place and set Martin up for the pair of early threes that started the run, saw the moment arrive in real time. “That’s when I knew he was flowing a little bit,” Shead said. “Tonight was awesome because you know when guys are ready for their moment, they pop, and he popped tonight. He’s been there waiting, waiting and it was cool to see him get his shine.” Martin returned the credit in one line: “Jamal is special. He gets you going.” Rajakovic framed the whole night as more than a rotation story: “Tonight was inspirational for us, not just because we were missing players and other guys stepped up, but the fight we had to have to win. When things were not going our way and they were getting 11 offensive rebounds to start the game, we never stopped fighting. It was a huge cultural win for us, I would say.” The NBA’s own account led its Friday night recap with the same player, posting “ALIJAH MARTIN WAS ON FIRE FROM DEEP” with his 27 points and six threes at the top of the league’s Cup coverage.

The league’s official highlights carry the second half that turned the game, from Martin’s go-ahead three midway through the third quarter to the close:

The Numbers That Settled Overnight

The morning box score reads harder than the live one did. The Associated Press count, carried by theScore, puts Martin’s 27 points above his season total entering the night: 23 points across seven games. He had scored more than nine points in none of his previous 30 career games, and he had made six three-pointers in his entire NBA career, on 27 attempts, before making six in this one game. Fourteen of the 27 arrived in the first quarter alone, already a career high before the second quarter began, and he was perfect from the field in the second half. Raptors on SI noted the trust that followed: Rajakovic closed the game with Martin on the floor instead of Ja’Kobe Walter, who shot 2 of 12, and Martin led every Toronto reserve in minutes. Strip Martin’s threes out and the rest of the Raptors shot 1 of 25 from deep on the night recorded in the same report; with them, a team ranked near the bottom of the league in three-point shooting won a road game by 14.

Two supporting lines also grew overnight. Jakob Poeltl’s 19 points and 11 rebounds were a season high in scoring, with six offensive rebounds, four of them in a fourth quarter where he scored 11, in just his return run from the shoulder bursitis that had cost him two games. And a Toronto team missing its best rebounder in Barnes still won the glass 42-37 and forced 20 Milwaukee turnovers. Milwaukee’s side of the ledger settled too: at 1-8, the Bucks are off to their slowest start since 1993-94, when they lost 10 of their first 11 and finished 20-62. The NBA’s official game recap condenses the night to its essentials:

Raptors NBA Cup Picture After First Win

The Cup table is the other overnight result. Sportsnet’s updated 2026 NBA Cup standings put East Group A at Detroit 1-0 with a plus-16 differential, Orlando 1-0 at plus-7, Toronto 1-1 at plus-7, Milwaukee 0-1 at minus-14 and Brooklyn 0-1 at minus-16. Friday’s win was Toronto’s first in the competition after the opening loss to Orlando, and it keeps the group genuinely open with the Raptors’ next Cup game at Detroit still to come. Bleacher Report’s bracket read through Friday’s games called Group A a three-team race between Orlando, Toronto and Detroit, with one honest caveat: Toronto’s loss is to the Magic, so the head-to-head tiebreaker already sits with Orlando. A 14-point road win, banked without three starters, is exactly the kind of result that keeps a wild-card path alive on differential if the group itself breaks the wrong way.

What It Means Next For Martin And Memphis

The rotation question is now the story of Monday. Raptors on SI’s verdict was that Martin’s night “will go a long way in earning Rajakovic’s trust” and could earn him a larger role while injuries remain a theme, and Raptors Rapture argued on Saturday that Rajakovic has no choice but to give him a real role against Memphis, with the confidence of his Florida and FAU years finally showing in his shot. No fresh update on Barnes (groin), Quickley (hamstring) or Leonard (knee management) had been published by Saturday afternoon, so Monday’s injury report will set the size of the opening; what Milwaukee settled is that the opening, however large, has a name at the front of it. One game does not settle a rotation. A career night that triples a player’s old high, surpasses his season total and draws a “cultural win” from his head coach is how the argument gets made, and Martin has now made it in the only place it counts.