MILWAULEE — On one hand, the Toronto Raptors were always supposed to beat the Milwaukee Bucks.
All the ‘respect your opponent’, ‘any NBA team can win on any night’ mumbo jumbo aside, when the Raptors set out on their four-game road trip with Kawhi Leonard nursing his knee injury in parts unknown, getting a win over the ‘Giannis-doesn’t-live-here-anymore’ Bucks was crucial.
Losing to Luka Doncic and the Lakers on the road? That’s going to happen. To Nikola Jokic and the Nuggets at altitude in Denver? When ‘Joker’ is on, he’s tough to beat, even for good teams.
But when you have intentions of competing for a playoff spot in the Eastern Conference, dropping games to the reconstructed Bucks, who had just one win on the season coming into Friday, is a no-no.
But how were these Raptors going to do it, especially when they arrived at Fiserv Forum missing Scottie Barnes (left adductor strain) and Immanuel Quickley (right hamstring)?
With a team effort, it turns out, as the Raptors outlasted the Bucks 121-107 to improve to 5-4 on the season, 2-2 on their now-completed road trip and 1-1 in NBA Cup play.
It was the kind of showing that a team trying to find itself a little bit in the early weeks of the season can grab on to, even it came against an opponent the Raptors were expected to beat.
The crucial contributions came from corners of the roster that might not have been anticipated; players waiting for a chance to shine.
So hello Alijah Martin.
Opportunities for the 24-year-old have been hard to come by since the Raptors picked him 39th overall in 2025.
He played on a two-way contract last season and tore up the G League, but he appeared in only 23 NBA games and cracked double figures in minutes in just five of them. The Raptors signed him to a standard NBA contract this season, but his progress was slowed by off-season knee surgery.
On Friday, Martin made his presence known. He came into the game having converted 9-of-14 field goal chances in 49 minutes spread across seven appearances. The chest-to-chest defence he can manage against almost anyone with his burly frame always is apparent.
But Friday was something else.
With the Raptors down three starters, Martin was going to get a crack of daylight. There were minutes to be had. And from the moment he hit the floor with less than five minutes gone in the first quarter and the Raptors already down nine, his battery was fully charged. He hit the line of scrimmage like a Heisman Trophy-winning running back bursting through a seam at and barrelling through the secondary.
He got the pump primed when he split the lane for a dunk, but really started rolling when Jamal Shead hit him for a pair of wide-open threes.
“That’s when I knew he was flowing a little bit,” said Shead.
Said Martin: “Jamal is special. He gets you going.”
The final tally was a career-high 27 points (surpassing his total points on the season) on 9-of-11 shooting and 6-of-7 on threes. He made a number of good plays defensively down the stretch too, harassing Bucks rookie Brayden Burries (21 points, 11 rebounds) and leading scorer Tyler Herro (23 points 10 assists) into close-range misses before the Raptors closed the door.
“Tonight was awesome because you know when guys are ready for their moment, they pop, and he popped tonight,” said Shead, who shone brightly in his own right with 10 points and a career-high 16 assists against just one turnover in his first start of the season. “He’s been there waiting, waiting and it was cool to see him get his shine.”
The Raptors got plenty of contributions from various places against the Bucks, who dropped to 1-8 in their first season since two-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo left for the Miami Heat. RJ Barrett finished with 27 points, while Collin Murray-Boyles had 19 points and four steals.
And they needed them. The Bucks were not an opponent the Raptors could afford to take for granted, especially with Barnes and Quickley – representing about 40 points a game – sidelined, along with Leonard.
Toronto was a little slow out of the gate and trailed by as many as 13 in the first quarter, but the Raptors kept the Bucks in reach, even as Milwaukee had hoovered up 11 first-half offensive rebounds and converted 55 per cent of field-goal attempts on the way to a 60-51 lead at the break.
The Raptors kept clawing back. They finally took the lead –fittingly – on Martin’s fifth three of the night midway through what was a nearly perfect third quarter. The Raptors had five different players with at least six points in the third and shot 62 per cent from the floor thanks to nine assists on 15 field goals. They started the fourth quarter up by two and kept the gas on.
The Raptors were clicking. When they needed a steal, they got one. An offensive rebound? They got one. A stop? A timely bucket? Plenty of both.
They weren’t playing Kevin Durant-era Golden State Warriors, but the Raptors were vulnerable, having given up 126.8 points per 100 possessions over their previous four games, which put them 29th in the NBA over that stretch.
Holding the Bucks to just 47 points in the second half wasn’t nothing.
“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,” said head coach Darko Rajakovic. “When things were not going our way and they were getting 11 offensive rebounds to start the game, we never stopped fighting. It was inspirational the way the guys stayed together. They continued talking, preaching the right stuff. It was a huge cultural win for us, I would say.”
It was an even bigger moment for Martin, a second-year guard who had made just 6-of-27 threes in his brief NBA career, but drained six in one game when his team needed them most.
It was a reward for a lot of work, and comfort after a lot of doubt.
“I don’t want to get emotional, but when you love the game and it just gets stripped away from you (due to his knee surgery), from like, things you can’t control, you just hit rock bottom,” said Martin. “So I’m grateful, honestly. I’m just going to keep my head down, stay humble and just keep pushing.”
As a bonus, his mother Tina was at the game. Typically, she makes all the Raptors games she can drive to from their home in Mississippi – in Memphis, Dallas and New Orleans. But she has family in Milwaukee, so she made the trip to Wisconsin this weekend.
Did he know he was going to have a special night?
“Honestly I didn’t know, but I knew I was about to play hard because my nom was coming (to the game),” said Martin.
He made the trip more than worthwhile for her and the Raptors.
It’s been a tough start for Jakob Poeltl, the Austrian centre coming off a sub-par season last year. He had missed two games with bursitis in his left shoulder and had struggled to put his imprint on games he had played,
But in 30 minutes Friday, Poeltl put up a season-high 19 points and 11 rebounds to go along with three steals and a blocked shot. Six of his rebounds came on the offensive end, with four of those in the fourth quarter when he scored 11 points.
“I’m just trying to be as productive as I can be when I’m out there,” said Poeltl, who came into the game averaging 5.2 points and 5.7 rebounds with block, steal and field-goal percentages at rates not seen since his rookie season. “Tonight was one of those nights, especially with our main ballhandlers out, we were going to need some more production stat-wise, compared to other situations where it’s more passive things that don’t show up in the box score as much.”
It can’t possibly be 19 years since T.J. Ford was with the Raptors, can it? But bball-reference.com doesn’t lie. So it was with great pleasure, I ran into Ford in Milwaukee on Friday.
The speedy point guard was with the Raptors in 2006-07 and 2007-08, helping Toronto reacj the playoffs each season. The former University of Texas star has been living in Houston and been busy on the youth basketball scene there, turning down different opportunities to coach at the NBA level.
But with his own family getting older, he was ready to jump in when Bucks head coach Taylor Jenkins called. When Ford’s injuries ended his career in the middle of the 2011-12 season, he joined Jenkins’ staff with the San Antonio Spurs’ G-League team and they have kept in touch since.
When Jenkins got the head-coaching job with the Bucks – the team that drafted Ford – he figured it was time and accepted Jenkins’ offer to join his staff this year.
His coaching philosophy is simple: “The ultimate thing you want players to believe (is) that you are going to pour everything into them to get better,” says Ford, 43. “So I think I can provide some of my wisdom and my experience and being very relatable in situations. I carry myself the same way I did as a player: just be engaged with everybody on the team, try to make sure guys understand they all are important, and do everything we can possibly to get better every single day.”
He looks back at his two seasons with the Raptors fondly.
“One of the best times of my life, and my career was being able to be with a great organization, being able to be in another country and be embraced was super fun,” he said. “The atmosphere throughout the entire city is awesome. I love the food, and then when you look at it, it was part of the rebuild. We made the playoffs, won the division and then Toronto kind of took it to another level after that.”
Rajakovic has friends everywhere he goes in the NBA, but few are closer pals than Jenkins.
“We go back to our San Antonio days, our G-League days. He was at my wedding, that’s how close we are,” said Jenkins.
When Jenkins got his first head-coaching job with the Memphis Grizzlies, Rajakovic was one of his first hires and they worked together there for three seasons before Rajakovic was hired by the Raptors in 2023.
“I knew the No. 1 calling card for a Darko-led team would be constant growth from his individual players, and I think you’ve seen that over these first three years,” Jenkins said. “That’s what I saw from afar, even coaching against him. Tons of individual growth from players. He’s committed to that.”
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