They just found something special...

Before this game tonight against the Milwaukee Bucks, Elijah Martin had knocked down six three-point shots in his entire NBA career. But in tonight's game, he doubled his career total because he hit six threes himself in this game alone. And thank goodness he did because the Raptors were missing a ton of their top players in this game. You had no Kawhi with the knee swelling. You know Scottie Barnes as he has that groin issue. Emmanuel Quickley was a late scratch out there for this one as well as he has a sore hamstring. About an hour before the game, it was announced to everyone. So two nights after the Denver Nuggets ran them off the court out there in the second half, particularly the third quarter of that game on Wednesday, the Toronto Raptors felt like they were in a really tough spot coming into this road game against the Milwaukee Bucks with all these injuries. This team. desperately needed a win, and they didn't have their top guys. And frankly, this game looked like it was going to be very, very bad for the Toronto Raptors. With a minute 50 left in the first half, the Toronto Raptors are down by 15 against a team that is 1-8 on the season. Thank goodness the team did end up winning by 14 points. The Raptors pulled this out and got the victory. The folks that really flipped this game were a second round pick last season that some people were surprised he got the full time contract this year. And this felt like his big NBA moment where he had a big opportunity to come out there on the court and show what he's got. And then the other guy that really turned this game around for the Raptors is the man that. Let's dive into this because the Toronto Raptors looked It looked gross, there weren't a lot of words that I could say out here on these videos to describe what was going on out there in the first half. Milwaukee led 60-51, heading into halftime, and Hero was getting whatever he wanted. And again, you guys know how much I stan RJ Barrett, how much he's my guy, and all this type of stuff. But this man was getting hunted on the defensive end. And it was a really tough watch because without Kawhi, without Scottie, obviously those two guys are elite defenders. Don't get me wrong. But the Raptors identity is supposed to be their elite, aggressive defense being on a string, all this different stuff. At least that's the stuff that they're talking about in these postgame interviews in the terms of, you know, what the emphasis is for the squad. And that should maintain even without your top guys. But in the first half, it really didn't. I don't want to bag on RJ, but he at one point was a minus 22 in just 15 minutes of action. And what made things even scarier is the Raptors were down going into the half, and it's usually been the third quarter where this Raptors team has been known to collapse, where things have been falling apart for this squad in recent games. Before tonight's game against the Milwaukee Bucks, the Raptors had lost the third quarter in five of their eight games so far this season. And a couple of them were extremely disastrous, right? You had the 20-point loss of the quarter against the Minnesota Timberwolves, and then the Denver Nuggets beat them by 26 on Wednesday. But this time, they won that quarter 38-27, and it was their best third quarter of the season. They took the lead for good with about two minutes left out there in the third. On a Jamal Shead pass to Allen Graves, as Shead was just diming people up this entire night. We'll talk about the offense, we'll talk about who stepped up, but it was really the defense in the second half that turned things around for the Toronto Raptors, as they kept the Milwaukee Bucks to 47 points after halftime. The Raptors had 12 steals for them from Colin Murray-Boyles, and the Bucks turned the ball over 21 times. The Milwaukee Bucks went 10 for 40 from behind the three-point line, so the stops started piling up and the Raptors could go out and run. And even in the good games, the bad games, all that stuff, the Raptors have been very elite in the fourth quarters so far this year. They won this quarter again, 32-20, and through nine games, they haven't lost the fourth quarter yet. They're a plus 77 out there in the most important quarter out there in these games. So for as disastrous as the first half may have looked, the Toronto Raptors, without three of their top guys, end up winning the second half of this game, 70-47, without their, you know, Immanuel Quickley, Scottie Barnes, and Kawhi. But let's really take a deep dive into who did this because Elijah Martin, you're going to hear his name a lot out there in this video. His previous career high was nine points. Now, some people might be unfamiliar. Elijah Martin was the 39th pick in the 2025 NBA draft. He's out of Florida Atlantic. He spent his whole rookie year basically on a two-way deal, not basically on a two-way deal. He was on a two-way deal his entire rookie season. And in July, he ended up signing a standard contract with the Toronto Raptors. It was two years and a reported $4.8 million. million dollars. And even after getting the standard contract, he barely played in the Raptors' first seven games. The most minutes he's logged in one of these games was just 16. Now, this isn't to say this guy isn't accustomed to big games. He ended up winning a national title out there in Florida. He's a dog. He's been a top option for the Raptors 905 for a lot of last season. He knows these big moments. He knows... How to step up in these games. He just never really had the opportunity for the Toronto Raptors just yet in his career. And you're seeing it in all these stats, right? Before Friday, he had 74 points total in his entire NBA career in just 30 games. This season, it started to pace up a little bit. 23 points in seven games, but still not a lot of run early on in this year. But obviously, with the injuries against the Milwaukee Bucks, he had a real opportunity. The guy exploded. He had 27 points, more than his whole season put together so far. Let me know in the comments about your initial reaction to this, because there's been a lot of people talking about Elijah Martin, how he's dominated the G League on the offense and defensive end, and he just needed some burn, needed some opportunities out there on the main roster. So do you guys think it's a one-off? Do you think it's for real? Because the numbers are pretty staggering. He had 11 points in his first. Five minutes off the bench today against the Bucks. By the middle of the third quarter, he ended up having 19 points, and it was efficient. He did it all on just eight shots so far at that point. He finished the game with nine for 11 shooting. He had six to seven of his three-point shots in 31 minutes. Toronto Raptors were a plus 22 with him on the floor in a 14-point win. Since the 96-97 season, the Raptors have only had three players that had a game with 25 points and 80% shooting and six threes. And now Elijah Martin is the 4th. And you can look at the rest of this team from 3. It was a disaster class. Everyone else shot 3 for 25 from behind the arc. And the two players a lot of people were expected to step up. RJ Barrett, Jacoby Walter went 0 for 4 and 1 for 7 respectively. Without Martin in this one, the Toronto Raptors would have got slapped around by the Milwaukee Bucks. Which would have raised the alarms for a lot of people following this game. The team could not make a single shot outside the three-point line, and they needed someone to step up, be able to knock down those looks, while also maintaining a level of intensity aggression out there at the defensive end, and that's exactly what Elijah Martin provided. So shout out to Elijah Martin. I'm very interested to see how his role ends up evolving and developing after this game once players return from injury, because of course, he was deep out there in the depth chart, but if he continues to have nights like this, and more importantly, continues He used to shoot at this level. He's going to be a guy that's knocking on the door for a lot of minutes for this Raptors team. And while this is obviously a huge story, the Raptors found something special in Elijah Martin here tonight. It's probably not the most important thing that happened in this game. The biggest thing that's going to have most implications on this team moving forward, probably, you never know, Elijah Martin become a superstar after this game and spark something big. But nonetheless, the thing that's probably going to have the most effect on this team is what we saw from Jakob Pörtl tonight. Pörtl, as anyone that follows this channel knows, has been the center of... Pretty well every trade discussion, not just on my channel, but across Raptors land over the past nine months, given his contract and just how much he struggled with injuries. And this season, since returning from injury, it's gotten worse somehow. It's been a mess. The eye test has been tough, and I've been rooting so hard for Jakob Pörtl to turn around his game, bounce back. I've been calling for it all summer and then. To have it regress even further for the first few games of the season just made me want to pull my hair out, but tonight, small sample size, not a lot of players against a horrible team, so take it all with a grain of salt, but this was the best version of Jakob Pörtl I've seen in probably a year and a half. But it's important to understand the context in terms of how the fan base, how the organization is viewing Jakob Pörtl right now. Anthony Slater at ESPN reported the Raptors nearly traded to Domantas Sabonis at the trade deadline in February, and it died because no one in the NBA wanted Pörtl's contract. He makes $19.5 million a season and $27.3 million over the next three years. And two years from now, it's actually $29 million. So his contract is just brutal. Things got even worse at the start of this year. He had 31 points in his first six games total. Then to make matters worse, he missed both games out there in Los Angeles with bursitis in his shoulder and came off the bench against the Denver Nuggets. A week ago on TSN, a panel came out and said that they needed something more from Jakob Poeltl, and it's looking really, really desperate right now. But tonight against the Milwaukee Bucks, he actually gave the Raptors something, not just in the box score. We'll take a look at the numbers, but from the eye test, This was a different Jakob Poeltl. Statistically, you know, he had 19 points, 11 rebounds on 9 of 14 shooting against a Miles Turner, who is a very good shot blocker. Like, I'm not sold on Miles Turner being the most elite defender in the NBA, but he is an amazing shot blocker. Six of the boards the Raptors had, or Jakob Poeltl had, were on the offensive end, the most by anybody in this game. He also added three steals and played 31 minutes, his most all year. The last time he had 19 and 11 was back in March and We didn't have many of those games last season, and this is the version of him they need. At least move in this direction, because last year, he averaged 10.7 points and 7 rebounds, shot 70% in a down year. Like, people were extremely disappointed with those numbers for him last season. Years prior, he was close to 15-10 on a lot of these nights, and a lot of Raptors fans I've forgotten who that player was, and of course injuries were the main reason that was the case, and that was one of the reasons I was encouraged, and I talked positively about Jakob Poeltl a lot over the course of the summer. Not that the contract was some stellar thing that no one really realized, I never argued that, but I was just a believer that Jakob Poeltl could bounce back to who he was a couple of seasons ago and make that contract hopefully look reasonable. And when we saw him in preseason moving a lot better, even though the stats weren't great in preseason, but he was moving better. I'm like, OK, we're moving in the right direction. He's getting healthy. If he's healthy, there's no reason he can't be that player he was two years ago. But nonetheless, in the first few games of this season, then he went down with injuries. But in the games, the sample size that we got. Even though he was moving better, he was unable to contest at the rim like he did a good job when he was actually contesting, but he was just too slow foot. He wasn't able to get these deflections. He wasn't able to block shots. He wasn't able to move his feet the same way he did in that 22, 23, early 24 seasons. He wasn't doing those same things that made him the anchor, the key piece out there on the defensive end for those Toronto Raptors teams. Also wasn't rebounding an elite rate and Miles Turner is probably the most overrated rebounder in the league. He's actually brutal on that end, but tonight he was playing with fire. The Jakob Poeltl was playing with fire against Myles Turner. He was just snatching the ball out of the big man, big man's hands of the Milwaukee Bucks possession after possession after possession. And sometimes, you know, centers, they load up on a bunch of, you know, rebounds that fall in their lap. From the eye test, Jakob Poeltl was dogging out there for these boards on the defensive and offensive end. He had a couple of really just momentum-swinging plays out there with his hustle out there on the glass, and I want to give credit to him because I've been waiting for this person to show up in these games. I don't need Jakob Poeltl. Sure, it'd be ideal if he could knock down corner threes, if he could space the floor, if he could just take people off the dribble and do amazing things, switch around the three-point line, but I don't need all that. I need Jakob Poeltl to be able to come in for as many games as possible, protect the rim, not let teams kill us on the offensive glass, and just be a central focus out there for the Raptors. That's all I need. I don't need to do anything crazy. I know it's against a horrible team where players need to step up, and we can't let one game sample size bring us back on the wagon and have full faith out there in Purtle. But from what I saw on this, forget the 19-11, whatever his points were out there in this game. We get this level of intensity. He's had the mobility this season. I'm giving credit. Like, he looks more healthy this year, but he just, it was more lethargic, you know, in terms of his movements and stuff on the defensive end. That's been so frustrating. It hasn't been, you know, the actual mobility. His movement is actually pretty decent this entire season. But if we can get this level of fight, this level of aggression, this level of just intensity from Jakob Poeltl, It's game changing for the Toronto Raptors because realistically we're going to, I don't want to give up first round picks just to get off his salary. I don't want to do that. So if he can just figure it out, be the player that Bobby Webster paid. I don't know, it would be crucial for this team. But nonetheless, Jakob Poeltl, Elijah Martin were the two big stories in this one, and one guy that's probably going to get overlooked because, again, his stats aren't always flashy and it's never always the most perfect looking thing on the court, but one guy had to facilitate everyone to orchestrate things for this team. And with Quickley out, That role, that responsibility was given to Jamal Shead, and he ran this game for the Toronto Raptors. He had 10 assists in the first half with zero turnovers. That tied Fred VanVleet for the most first half assists in Toronto Raptors history, and he finished the game with 16 assists, a career high that was previously 14 from March against Utah. He ended up smashing that by an extra two assists. And this season, his best game before tonight was a total of eight assists, so he did a really, really good job of orchestrating the offense for the Toronto Raptors. Now, he only scored 10 points, and nobody on the team was better on the floor with a plus 23 in 34 minutes, but a lot of the little things Jamal Shead does on the court doesn't pop up in the box score, and he does this type of stuff night in, night out. Josh Lewenberg said, cut the chain in half and give it to Shead and Martin, and honestly, I'd agree. And this might be giving Darko Rajacovic some real questions once Immanuel quickly becomes healthy. Immanuel Quickley has been playing 28-38 minutes a game, scoring 17.4 points a night, and he's not losing his job over one game, the starting position, or anything like that. But quickly, his entire tenure with the Toronto Raptors has been remarkably streaky. And you know in Denver, he scored 13 points and went 2 of 8 from 3. And they were in his minutes. They were a minus 29 with him on the floor. But Shed just showed, even without, you know, the elite knockdown three-point shooting, that you know it was very streaky for Emmanuel Quickley's numbers Quickley is definitely the better shooter. Nonetheless, Shed just showed what the offense can look like when you have a point guard that is dedicated, that is locked in on setting everyone else up. But nonetheless, I'll stop spreading Jamal Shed propaganda. The only thing that really mattered in this game was the fact that the Toronto Raptors got a win. If they lost this game, they would have been 1-3 out there on this road trip. For the season, they would have went below .500, and losing to a team like the Milwaukee Bucks is just a demoralizing thing. I mean, these players are human, and you'd feel it if you ended up losing one of these games. Instead, they're 5-4, and in a road trip that felt like it was a disaster, it still ended up being 2-2 in terms of the record. I'm sure there's a lot of people that are just going to come out and say, Oh, it's the Bucks. Who cares? They're 1-8. They've lost five straight, so nobody's building a statue out there for Elijah Martin or anything like that yet. There's going to be a lot of doomers coming out and being like, you know, this is still a really ugly game, right? Miles Turner went 0 of 7 for the Bucks, and it was still a relatively close game for stretches. RJ scored 27, but on 9-21 shooting, it was a minus 2. Yeah, RJ. I know it's 27 points, and I'm the biggest RJ Stan, RJ Glazer, but the defense really aggravated me in the first half, so I'm not going to come out here and gas them up like I usually do with these bits, but 27 points is 27 points. Coby White had 19 points and four steals, and the Raptors scored 58 points in the paint, and when the threes don't fall, that's what you have to do, you know, and I've talked about this, the Raptors are built or constructed to be a more inside-out team, and if you're If you're not hot from three. Play inside out. Don't settle unless you have a guy cooking like Elijah Martin. But the next game for the Toronto Raptors is at home. It's on Monday against the Memphis Grizzlies, who are 6-3 right now in the season. Obviously, that gives a couple days for Scottie Barnes, Emmanuel Quickly to bounce back and get healthy. I'm sure Kawhi Leonard's going to be out for at least a few more days following that game. But I think one of these big developments we're going to see, or a couple of them, are will this version of Jakob Pertl return? Will we continue? Will we see this level of fight, energy, defense, all this stuff that we saw in this game against the better teams in the league because that would be huge for the Toronto Raptors then of course. If Elijah Martin continues to play like this, plays with this level of confidence, it's going to be tough to keep him on the bench for long stretches of the season. But let me know what you guys think in the comment section down below. What storylines would impress you most? And I'll pose a question here, I want to get a little sampler, a little feeler out. Who do you feel more comfortable with on the court, Emmanuel Quigley or Jamal Shedd? Comment down below, I want to read them all. If you want some of the latest updates on all the trade rumors and everything happening, check out this video right here.