Alijah Martin and Jamal Shead carried a Raptors team missing three starters, and only one of them is worth an add

Alijah Martin walked into Milwaukee on Friday having made 6 of 27 three-point attempts in his NBA career, and he walked out having made 6 of 7 in one night. The 2025 second-round pick scored a career-high 27 points on 9-for-11 shooting off the bench, according to the Associated Press recap of Toronto's 121-107 NBA Cup win, after a season in which he had scored 23 points across seven games and had never scored more than nine in any of his previous 30. Beside him, Jamal Shead made the first start of his season and finished with a career-high 16 assists and 10 points, and both men came to 49 fantasy points under ESPN's standard scoring, which put them among the 15 best lines of the night.

They had the room because Toronto was missing three starters. Scottie Barnes was ruled out with a left adductor and groin injury, Immanuel Quickley sat with a right hamstring injury, and Kawhi Leonard missed his seventh straight game with his knee, according to TSN, FantasyPros and the AP. Neither Barnes nor Quickley has a timeline beyond day to day, and RotoWire's note on Quickley says to treat him as questionable for Monday's home game against Memphis. A manager deciding what to do this weekend is choosing between two lines that looked the same in the box score and are not the same bet.

The ranks are from this morning's run of our projections board under ESPN's standard scoring and our 9-cat board, which has read Friday's box scores. Shead rose from 227th on points the morning before, and Martin from 399th.

Shead's job exists for as long as Quickley's hamstring does

Shead had played between 16 and 25 minutes in every one of Toronto's first eight games and handed out at least five assists in seven of them, so the passing on Friday was the same player given more of the ball rather than a different one. What changed was the minutes and the start, and both came on a night Quickley, who had started all eight of Toronto's games, was out. That makes Shead the cleaner pickup in deep points leagues and in 9-cat leagues that need assists and steals, with the honest caveat that his value falls back to where it was the night Quickley returns. He has not been a scorer, and his 4-for-10 shooting on Friday is closer to his usual than not, so in categories he helps in assists and steals and costs a little in field goal percentage.

Martin's night was the shooting, and the shooting will not hold

Nothing about Martin's previous games suggested 27 points. He had played 16 minutes once and single digits in every other game, so the 31 minutes on Friday came from the injuries rather than from a role he had earned, and a player who had made 22% of his career threes is not a 40% shooter because he made six in a row. He is worth a speculative add only in the deepest leagues for as long as Barnes is out, and it is worth watching whether Toronto keeps him in the rotation on Monday before spending a pickup on him.

Barnes and Quickley

Barnes had played all eight of Toronto's games before Friday and is still 10th on our points board and 17th on our 9-cat board, so nothing about a day-to-day groin injury should move a manager to drop him; hold him and check Toronto's injury report before Monday. The same goes for Quickley, who played 32 minutes in Wednesday's loss in Denver before his hamstring put him on the injury report, a sequence RotoWire noted without saying when he was hurt. Our projections, reading ESPN's injury list, expect both back around Monday. Leonard is the longer absence, and our projections, reading ESPN's injury list, currently count him out until about November 23. If Barnes and Quickley are both back on Monday, Shead goes back to the bench and the add has done its job for a game or two, which is about what a streaming pickup is for.

Every player in this story is on the fantasy basketball rankings and the 2026-27 projections, and the NBA depth charts show where each one stands in his team’s rotation tonight.