{"id":565466,"date":"2026-01-28T03:46:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T03:46:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/565466\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T03:46:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T03:46:14","slug":"former-gator-alijah-martin-named-nba-rising-star-wruf-98-1-fm-850-am","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/565466\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Gator Alijah Martin Named NBA Rising Star &#8211; WRUF 98.1 FM | 850 AM"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The NBA announced the 2026 Rising Stars Player Pool, which includes Toronto Raptors rookie and former Gator <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nba\/player\/_\/id\/4702656\/alijah-martin\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Alijah Martin<\/a>. Martin will play on the NBA G-League team in the tournament.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Martin was a key part of the Gators <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wruf.com\/headlines\/2025\/04\/08\/champion-gators-complete-comeback-for-the-ages\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Men\u2019s Basketball National Championship<\/a> team in 2025 and averaged a career high of 14.4 points per game in his graduate season. The Mississippi native became the first player to start in a Final Four with two different teams: the Florida Atlantic Owls in 2023 and the Florida Gators in 2025. He earned second team All-American Conference honors his senior year at FAU.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>During his only season at Florida, Martin was a part of the highest scoring trio in school history alongside Walter Clayton Jr. and Will Richard. He put up three 20+ point games and ranked 3rd for points in a single season by a transfer. Notably, Martin scored 17 points in Florida\u2019s Final Four matchup with Auburn and had two memorable dunks in the second half.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>With the Raptors, Martin has made 10 game appearances and put up 30 total career points. In the G-League, he has averaged 18.6 ppg, including a game-high of 23 points against the Noblesville Bloom on Jan. 6th, leading to a victory for the 905 Raptors.<\/p>\n<p>The Rising Stars Mini-Tournament will showcase the league\u2019s standout rookies, second-year players and G-League talents. The game is set for Feb.13th at the LA Clippers\u2019 Intuit Dome during NBA All-Star Weekend.<\/p>\n<p> Category: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wruf.com\/headlines\/category\/basketball\/\" rel=\"category tag nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Basketball<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wruf.com\/headlines\/category\/former-gators\/\" rel=\"category tag nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Former Gators<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wruf.com\/headlines\/category\/nba\/\" rel=\"category tag nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NBA<\/a>    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NBA announced the 2026 Rising Stars Player Pool, which includes Toronto Raptors rookie and former Gator Alijah&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":565467,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3770],"tags":[3518,7,26542,426,56874,6,38922,681,680,476,3820],"class_list":["post-565466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto-raptors","tag-alijah-martin","tag-basketball","tag-florida-gator","tag-florida-gators-mens-basketball","tag-former-gators","tag-nba","tag-nba-rising-stars","tag-raptors","tag-toronto","tag-toronto-raptors","tag-torontoraptors"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115970676346524500","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/565467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}