He showed it in college, as he is one of just four players to lead two different college programs to the Final Four of the NCAA tournament, doing it in 2023 with upstart Florida Atlantic University and again in 2025 with the University of Florida.
But Martin is the only player in NCAA history to do that while also being a starter on a national championship team, as he was with the Gators in April.
The 23-year-old hasn’t wasted any time bringing his winning ways to the professional stage. The 39th pick in the draft in June has provided some excellent minutes off the bench for the Toronto Raptors in the Las Vegas Summer League.
Martin had 13 points and seven rebounds off the bench in the Raptors’ win over the Golden State Warriors on Thursday night and now will be part of another “final four” — this time with the 4-0 baby Raptors, who advance to the Summer League semifinals as the top seed.
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Raptors Summer League on Sportsnet
The Toronto Raptors look to stay undefeated in Summer League action as they take on the Golden State Warriors on July 17. Watch the matchup on Sportsnet and Sportsnet+ starting at 10 p.m. ET / 7 p.m. PT.
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A win over the Sacramento Kings in the semifinals Saturday will land the Raptors in the championship game Sunday night.
A Summer League championship means nothing in the grand scheme, but the Raptors stated it as a goal when they began training for the competition, viewing it as a culture builder for a young team that is trying to elevate itself after seasons of 25 and 30 wins, respectively, in the Eastern Conference.
As a group, they are playing astonishingly hard and have leveraged the lenient Summer League rules — players are allowed 10 personal fouls per game before being disqualified — to unleash a tireless, handsy and physical brand of full-court pressure.
Toronto’s Summer League stylings haven’t always been pretty — the Raptors are shooting just 42.8 per cent from the floor and 33 per cent from three — but it has been brutally effective, with Raptors opponents being hounded into 29 turnovers a game, which Toronto has translated into nearly 34 points, or more than a third over its overall offensive output.
It almost goes without saying that Martin has fit right in. He’s an A-plus athlete who glides around the floor fluidly until it’s time to explode from it, as he did with his dunk in traffic in the Raptors Summer League opener against the Chicago Bulls.
And if he doesn’t profile as a classic NBA wing while standing at just six-foot-one-and-a-half barefoot, his nearly six-foot-eight wingspan and 38-inch vertical jump help fill some gaps, along with a level of competitiveness that is hard to miss.
“I’m pretty conscious of (my athletic ability) just because I’ve been doing this a long time,” Martin said, when I spoke with him in Las Vegas last week. “And I love to use it more like on the defensive end, going out and making blocks and stuff like that. You have to understand the movements of the game and stuff like that, but I’m pretty conscious of my advantage. And I definitely play bigger than my size, and that comes with being athletic, being long and being confident. If you’re a small guy and you play small, you put yourself in a box, and I never want to put myself in a box.”
Martin’s challenge might be breaking out of the box that is the Raptors’ depth at the wing position. Vying for rotation minutes in the second unit at training camp, and likely all season long, will be incumbents Ja’Kobe Walter, Grady Dick, Ochai Agbaji, and AJ Lawson. There could be some minutes at point guard, but that is more of a long-term development plan for Martin, who has had some reps as the lead ball-handler in Las Vegas, but likely isn’t ready for that responsibility at the NBA level.
“I’ve been getting as many reps as I can at the point, so it feels comfortable,” he said. “And I’m getting to where I’m getting guys organized, and also, like, just being on time with the pass, the reads and stuff like that. (But) it’s all new, because I never really had the opportunity to be a full-time one. So that’s why I’m a little behind on that. But, you know, everything will catch up once it’s once the season hits. And it’s a lot of games, you get a lot of reps.”
In the meantime, it’s easy to profile Martin as a defensive terror and transition menace whom the Raptors can unleash situationally. Long-term, he could profile as a Bruce Brown-type player — someone who uses their defensive versatility, athleticism and basketball IQ to complement more ball-dominant teammates, all while raising the temperature of the game.
“I think one thing that sometimes gets taken for granted when you’re scouting talent, you look at the talent in itself, but it says something about a guy that could take a small school to the Final Four and then come back two years later and win a championship,” said Raptors Summer League head coach James Wade. “So, he’s a winner, he’s a competitor. And that’s the one thing I think we have (on the Summer League roster); the front office did a really good job of putting this group together. We have 16 competitors, so we’ve gotten a chance to see it, and he’s one of the leaders of that charge.
“The one thing that you’re going to see with him is he has skill, and he has talent, but you’re going to see him compete night in, night out,” said Wade. “And so if somebody’s on their heels, he’s going to attack them.”
He’s done his share in Las Vegas and will spend one last weekend in the desert playing in his third Final Four.
