Alijah Martin: Winning Over Everything
Stephen breaks down the game of National Championship-winning Florida guard Alijah Martin, and his prospects for the 2025 NBA Draft.
Winning Over Everything
There are certain types of players that draw a lot of attention from those who follow the NBA Draft cycle—even the best of talent evaluators. This isn’t really a best-kept secret, as you will hear us reference that at various points throughout a draft cycle. Removing any sort of internal bias I may have, one of my favorite No Ceilings pieces that we put out is the $DRFT Stock Market series. Our guy, Corey Tulaba, aggregates the ranking of prospects among the prominent draft outlets out there. His latest piece that dropped in late March revealed the Top 75 prospects that were ranked for those outlets. When you scroll through the list, some of the names make sense. Not only the names, but also the measurables and player types within—let’s say, the Top 30—make sense.
Once I started getting into the 30s, one player that I started to wonder where they were going to be ranked was Florida Gator guard Alijah Martin. To my surprise, Martin was nowhere to be found. I took it upon myself to start reaching out to some people within the draft, scouting, agency, and front office folks who I trust and communicate with regularly to see where they are on Alijah Martin. Some are confident that he is going to get a look. Some are sure he is going to be a pro.
As you can imagine, others are skeptical that a 6’2” guard who might not be a lead ball-handler can translate neatly to the NBA.
For what it’s worth, I totally understand that “smaller” guards aren’t going to get as much love as some forwards or big men. However, like with all things, context is just as important (if not more so) as statistics or player/archetype profiles. Those who are familiar with me and my work know that I co-host the “Draft Sickos'“ podcast for No Ceilings. As I have continued in my campaign for Alijah, my co-host Maxwell Baumbach has been replying with this line that perfectly encapsulates why I am so high on Martin:
“I’ve got to move some of these losers down my board”
-Maxwell Baumbach, No Ceilings
That is the best way to describe the Alijah Martin experience. He’s a winner—the proverbial “dog” out there, if you will. These are not the words that those who are data-tilted in their analysis or appreciation of players, but sometimes (all times?) the film and intangibles are equally as important. Don’t worry you “calculator rats” out there, Martin still has plenty for you to enjoy as well—and we’ll touch on that.
The Buildup
Alijah Martin hass had himself quite a season with Florida this year, taking them to the National Championship game while playing a pivotal part on a deep squad. This comes after his run with a loaded Florida Atlantic squad, who made it to the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament last season but fell to San Diego State.
On the season, Alijah averaged 14.4 PPG, 4.5 RPG, 2.2 APG, and 1.5 SPG. This production came with efficiency splits of 46/36/76. The Gators paired him with the returning Walter Clayton Jr. to have a complementary backcourt that could push the team to achieve a deep run in April. While Clayton Jr. would be the “setup man” between the two, but also the more dynamic scorer. Martin was able to be a finisher on offense and take on the tougher defensive responsibilities. Martin also was able to bring a certain undeniable toughness that would inherently command the respect of the rest of the roster.
Before we dive into the tape, I want to establish a baseline for what Alijah has been able to do this season:
BPM-8.8
Offensive Rating-122.5
Usage-20.8
Effective Field Goal Percentage-55.0
True Shooting Percentage-57.9
Offensive Rebounding Percentage-4.6
Defensive Rebounding Percentage-11.3
Assist Percentage-13.0
Turnover Percentage-12.8
Assist/Turnover-1.6
Block Percentage-0.7
Steal Percentage-2.9
Free Throw Rate-28.1
Dunk Percentage-81.3 (26/32)
Free Throw Percentage-75.0 (84/112)
Two Point Percentage-58.0 (105/181)
Three Point Percentage-35.0 (76/217)
Threes Per 100-11.3
If you look throughout the Bart Torvik database for players who are 6’2” or shorter, the only player that compares to Martin is George Hill. This comparison is an apt one, I feel. Hill was a better facilitator than what we have seen from Martin, but Hill was not as efficient inside the arc—nor did Hill finish with a dunk at all.
If Hill could be drafted 26th overall in a loaded 2008 NBA Draft class, would it be so crazy for Alijah Martin to be drafted in class that has so many questions once you get into the 20s? I don’t think so.
The Offense
The offensive role for Martin is actually pretty simple. Though he may not be the “heliocentric” guard that dictates the pace of play, Alijah is a floor-spacing guard who can be counted on to make good decisions with the ball. These types of guards are typically some of the most successful player types in the NBA, as I have written about before. Martin would make sense on a team that has an established offensive engine—which is almost every team in the league. His ability to shoot, make timely cuts and motions away from the ball, and keep a play or action going with the ball is something any team could use—no matter the era or emphasis put on offense.
Per Synergy, Alijah ranks in the 83rd percentile in points per possession for total offense. That’s incredible for a player that is projected to be in a supporting role. Though he makes highlight plays in transition—where he ranks in the 77th percentile—Martin does well in a halfcourt setting, ranking in the 76th percentile when the game slows down.
Shooting
On the season, Alijah has been an effective and efficient shooter from deep. We touched on the volume being above 11 threes per 100 possessions, but this is actually a career-low from him dating back to the 2021-2022 season. He shot over 12 threes per 100 and converted on 40% of those attempts. In fact, Martin is a career 36.5% shooter from deep.
Typically, when I break down a player’s shooting in written form, I’ll start with a basic catch-and-shoot look. I’ll break down the motion and give some sort of positive spin on the projection of the shot if it’s there. We’re not going to do this here with Alijah, because I feel like his spot-up is almost a given. I will point out that Martin ranks in the 56th percentile on catch-and-shoot looks and has shot 38.4% when left open from deep. What I absolutely love about Martin’s game is how he is a better shot off of the bounce than he will likely get credit for.
Synergy ranks Martin in the 87th percentile in shots off the bounce. In the Final Four matchup against Auburn, we see Alijah—not only shoot off the bounce, but do so in quick fashion. As Florida inbounds the ball here, Walter Clayton Jr. (#1 in blue) pushes the ball up the floor. Clayton Jr. recognizes that Martian (#15 in blue) isn’t picked up by anyone coming across halfcourt, and he has an opening on the left wing he could attack.
Martin gets the ball from Clayton Jr., and quickly gets into his shooting motion. What stands out to me is how much Auburn’s Chad Baker-Mazara (#10 in white) respects Alijah’s range from as deep as he goes into his shooting motion. Martin sees the defense selling out on the closeout and throws a pump. That pump gets Baker-Mazara to leave his feet. The trailing defender, Johni Broome (#4 in white), slides over to close off a potential driving lane for Martin, but he does not recover quickly enough to stop Alijah from pulling up for a three.
Alijah goes into a step-back and drains an open three to tie the game that his team would ultimately go on to win.
Martin can get into his shot in a more organized manner outside of taking advantage of misplaced transition defense—which is still impressive and important. In this clip against UConn in the second round of March Madness, Florida’s motion allows Martin to take advantage of halfcourt defense.
Florida’s offense is pretty sophisticated in that there are actions that translate well to the NBA. Thomas Haugh (#10 in white) is a good decision-maker in general, but especially as a collegiate frontcourt player. Because of this, the Gators can give him the ball and allow their guards to move away from the ball.
Haugh gets the ball along the top of the key with Martin parked in the same-side corner. Denzel Aberdeen (#11 in white) runs off of a screen set by Micah Handlogten (#3 in white) and cuts to the basket. Haugh kicks the ball to Handlogten, then screens for Martin. Martin runs to Handlogten for a DHO action along the right wing. This action forces UConn’s Samson Johnson (#35 in blue) to switch away from Handlogten and onto Alijah.
That switch induces confusion, as Johnson’s teammate, Jaylin Stewart (#3 in blue; Martin defender), is fighting through screens to regain position on his assignment. Stewart then backpedals to a rolling Handlogten, forcing the switching of assignments to stick—leaving Johnson on Martin. Martin sees all of this play out and understands his advantage as he squares up on the right wing. While Johnson’s momentum is drawing him laterally to stay in front of Martin, our guy is able to get into a step-back. Look at the amount of separation Alijah creates for him to connect on his three.
Finishing
Some may not be impressed with a sub-6’4” player being a solid shooter. I mean, shouldn’t that be a given for a player of his size to be able to connect from range? For realistic NBA projection, absolutely. With that said, it’s important for all players to be able to finish well—especially when chased off the three-point line.
Martin ranks in the 80th percentile when finishing at the rim—an area that accounts for 32.4% of his shot attempts. What stands out about Alijah’s finishing is how he leverages his shooting into driving opportunities, like what we see here in this game against Texas Tech in the tourney.
To start this clip off, you see Florida going into a DHO motion with their talented frontcourt. Alex Condon (#21 in white) starts this clip dribbling to the right wing to hand the ball off to Will Richard (#5 in white). Richard drives to the block, which causes the defense to rotate over.
Our guy is in the right corner, then slides over to present himself open to Richard. The ball is kicked out to Alijah, who fakes left and then drives right. When Martin makes it to the paint, he does not try to lob up some sort of floater. Alijah goes up to engage the defender, then extends out to his left to finish over the defense.
So often, smaller guards just can’t cut it in the league. This can be for multiple reasons, including strength and athleticism concerns that exist for many of those players. Those do not exist for Alijah—who is a real, in-game athlete.
We’ll go back to the UConn game for this one, and a Florida frontcourt player will be stringing along the offense, as usual. We’ll see Alex Condon hand the ball off toward the top of the key to Will Richard. As Richard receives the ball and continues to hand the ball off along the left wing, Alijah runs a shallow cut from the left side of the court to the right.
Walter Clayton Jr. is the recipient of the Will Richard handoff, and he goes into a two-man action with Rueben Chinyelu (#9 in white). UConn doubles Clayton Jr. and shows good weakside help on the right block. A well-timed skip pass to Martin on the left side, which causes the help to closeout hard to him. Martin rips through to the baseline and takes advantage of a perfectly sealed lane from Chinyelu to finish above the rim quickly before the help can challenge him.
Facilitating
This is an area of Alijah’s game that will draw the majority of criticism on offense—especially for a guard. Not all NBA guards are required to be primary initiators, but it certainly helps with projection and the number of teams it makes sense for a prospect to be drafted. Considering that Alijah isn’t the primary initiator for his current team, teams will likely wonder how much there is to work with. Even if Martin isn’t going to be the proverbial offense “hub” for his team, he is still a very proficient ball-handler who makes good decisions with the ball.
While playing for Florida Atlantic, Alijah’s role with the ball in his hands dwindled. This wasn’t due to a lack of skill on Martin’s part, but rather because smaller schools often have to get creative with their deployment of talent. The Owls had Martin play the majority of his minutes in the power forward role. They were able to get by doing this, as they had Johnell Davis, Nick Boyd, Bryan Greenlee, and Brandon Weatherspoon getting over 20 minutes per game on the team. FAU trusted Alijah’s toughness and athleticism to defend in the front court, so his pick-and-roll plays dried up to only 76 possessions, including passing possessions. That accounted for under 10% of the play types he was used in.
The transfer to Florida has given Martin the chance to do more with the ball in his hands. Not only did Alijah operate in pick-and-roll sets at a career-best clip (97 possessions including passing), but he was also used in handoff opportunities (63 possessions) in a manner that far exceeds any chances he had doing that with FAU.
And he didn’t disappoint. Alijah posted a career-best assist-to-turnover ratio of 1.5. This number isn’t anything other-worldly, but considering his uptick in creation opportunities, it’s encouraging to see that he made the right play more so than any other time in his collegiate career.
This play against Maryland supports the numbers. Richard starts this play with the ball in his hands, then moves the rock to Handlogten at the top of the key. Handlogten then dribbles his way over to Alijah on the left wing.
Our guy gets the ball off of the DHO and gets right to work. Martin has no wasted movements and moves with purpose. He runs his man through the Handlogten screen set to his left. Maryland shifts on the screen, which gets Derik Queen (#25 in black) onto Alijah.
With Handlogten diving to the rim—and with Martin’s ability to hit from deep—Maryland shifted their attention to stopping those two Gators. Martin is aware of the numbers on the coverage, and he sees Haugh running along the top of the key. Alijah picks up the dribble and swings the ball to the open man for three.
Fast forward to the 2nd half of the same game. With about 10 seconds left in the shot clock, Haugh is looking to move the ball into the hands of a shot creator. He sort of wildly runs into Richardson, who then runs baseline to clear space. Martin is tightly covered, but jukes himself open enough to get the ball in the right corner.
With just seven seconds left, he goes baseline and spins to his right. The defender falls in an attempt to draw a charge. Unsuccessful. Alijah drives to the paint with less than five seconds on the shot clock. As the help arrives, Martin makes a snappy wrap pass to Chinyelu, who throws down a nasty dunk.
Martin’s ability to hit from deep is what causes the defense to be so tight on him with 10 seconds left on the clock. His handle is what allows him to navigate around defenders with five seconds left. His awareness and poise is what allows him to make the right play with just precious seconds left for the play to be successful.
The Defense
While Alijah meets and exceeds many offensive thresholds, I (and many others) believe that NBA teams will value his defensive impact the most. With the makeup of this year’s Florida Gators, Coach Golden needed someone who could complement Walter Clayton Jr. on both sides of the ball. His floor spacing, finishing, and secondary handling allowed Clayton Jr. to be the on-ball threat on offense, but his toughness, athleticism, and prowess allowed Clayton Jr. to defend the weaker of the guards for their opponents.
Synergy grades Martin out in the 63rd percentile in overall defense, which grades out as “Good” per their metrics. Touching back on the role of taking on the tougher assignments, Alijah’s most defended play type was pick and roll sets. This accounted for 33.8% of his total defensive possessions. That defensive usage ranked within the 78th percentile. Against such plays, Alijah allowed only 0.551 points per possession—ranking in the 89th percentile (or “Excellent”).
Considering NBA teams all use variations of this play set the most, this alone makes Alijah a valuable player.
In the national championship game, Florida had to figure out which of the dangerous Houston guards Martin should defend. LJ Cryer was coming off a heater, Emanuel Sharp is the most physically imposing, and Milos Uzan has been a consistent scoring and passing threat throughout the season. Florida opted to use Martin on Uzan a lot, and this clip shows why.
Uzan (#7 in white) starts this clip off with the ball and is defended by our guy. Uzan moves the ball to Ja’Vier Francis (#5 in white) on the right down. Uzan goes to the weak side to set a double screen for LJ Cryer (#4 in white). The screen ends up being a fake, which has Uzan flash back to the ball for a DHO. Martin isn’t phased or fooled and is able to navigate around the screen and regain his position.
Uzan takes Martin to the right wing. Milos tries to get the ball into J’Wan Roberts (#13 in white). Martin makes the entry pass impossible, which causes Uzan to move the ball to Francis for another DHO. Milos tries, yet again, to find a way to get around Alijah. Uzan tries to shake him by running him into a screen to his left, but Martin gets skinny around the screen and closes off his driving lane. Milos crosses to his right with about three seconds left on the shot clock.
The only plausible thing for Milos to do to score now is some sort of a jumper. Martin stays in front of Uzan as he tries to break him down off of dribble. Alijah matches Uzan’s footwork, and he closes out as Milos gets the shot off. Uzan misses the three, all due to the tight defense Martin plays.
With Alijah as Uzan’s primary defender, Uzan was 2-of-9 from the floor—0-of-4 from deep.
Tahaad Pettiford has been one of the better freshmen in all of college basketball—especially coming into March Madness. Even in the tournament, Tahaad had consecutive 20-point performances against Creighton and Michigan. He ended up on the opposite end of Alijah Martin in their Final Four showdown. It did not go well for the freshman.
This clip is indicative of how well Alijah played against both Pettiford and Denver Jones—who starts over the freshman guard. This play starts with Pettiford (#0 in white) bringing the ball up and getting picked up by our guy. As Martin gets into position, Tahaad moves the ball to Johni Broome (#4 in white). The ball gets kicked out and swung back to Tahaad.
Pettiford looks to attack Martin off of the drive and takes him to the left wing. Martin sticks with the twitchy guard—even off of a quick step-back. Tahaad is a gunner, which a lot of people are aware of. Even Alijah. Our guy isn’t moved from a shifty step-back. Instead, he mirrors his man’s footwork and challenges the step-back, forcing the miss.
Pettiford was held to 7 points on 1-of-6 shooting from the floor and 0-of-4 from deep. Denver Jones—the other guard Martin defended a lot—was 3-of-9 from the floor and 1-of-5 from deep. That yielded an inefficient 10 points (three came from the foul line).
Alijah’s defense is valuable in many ways, most notably because it creates extra possessions for the offense. In this clip against Alabama in the SEC tournament, Mark Sears (#1 in red) brings the ball up the floor and is picked up by Alijah. Alijah’s positioning only allows a drive down the left side of the floor.
As Sears commits to the drive, Martin is glued to his hip. Martin does a great job of keeping his off-hand up to be in position to either contest a potential shot, or bother a passing lane. Chinyelu slides off of his man to force a double team. Sears sees this, and looks to hit a rolling Omoruyi (#11 in red) because he’s open. Alijah’s reach and positioning makes contact with an attempted overhead hook pass! That angle is likely open against most other guards, but Alijah’s wingspan.
In this clip against Kentucky, Alijah is matched up against Lamont Butler (#1 in white), but he switches onto Otega Oweh (#00 in white)—who made the All-SEC Second team—due to an off-ball action. The ball is kicked to Oweh in the left corner, and Alijah steps out to meet him. What I love about Martin’s positioning is that he cuts off Oweh’s right. He’s also air-tight on Oweh, which really cuts off a pass out of his pressure.
Alijah sees that Oweh isn’t eager to put the ball on the floor—likely due to limited options. As Otega is moving the ball into various positions, Martin just rips the ball right out of his hands. Oweh isn’t a weak guard, but our guy strikes quickly to force the turnover.
In terms of defensive events created, Alijah has 66 combined blocks and steals. Compare this to the number of fouls called against Alijah, which was only 54 times. This checks out with what we see from Martin on film: a fundamentally sound defender that creates chaos for whoever he guards.
Curtains
As many of you know, the most recent No Ceilings $DRFT update was published on March 27th. Alijah Martin was not on this list, which consisted of 75 players. I looked through all of the reputable draft outlets online, and no one has him. Yet, when I have reached out to people, they all agreed that he is an NBA player. It’s baffling to me. What stands out to me is how his game has translated to winning big for two separate programs, and how projectable his role is for the NBA. For those who value winning over everything, Alijah is the type of player NBA teams will love.
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