LOS ANGELES, CA — Like most NBA players, KJ Martin grew up dreaming of playing basketball at the highest of levels. That part of his story is typical. Just about everything else having to do with Martin, though, is uncommon.
Nearly every professional basketball player is driven by years of hard work and tremendous passion for the game. What makes Martin’s journey unique is that he grew up around NBA locker rooms. The son of former No. 1 overall pick and 15-year NBA veteran Kenyon Martin Sr., the Sixers’ fifth-year forward has understood what the NBA life is like since he could walk and talk. That made being drafted much easier for Martin than it would be for the average 19-year-old.
“It felt correct to be there,” Martin said in an exclusive conversation with PhillyVoice on Friday. “Not a lot of people have a dad that’s a No. 1 pick and a 15-year vet."
Martin told stories of growing up around Carmelo Anthony, Chauncey Billups, J.R. Smith and Kenyon Sr.'s other teammates with the Denver Nuggets.
Martin excitedly brought up the time he played Anthony in an NBA game -- his rookie season and Anthony's final year with the Lakers -- his "craziest experience."
"[Anthony] told me, 'I've known you since you were five or six years old, but I ain't going easy on you,'" Martin said.
"Sh*t, me neither," Martin responded.
What Martin did not mention during this discussion was that he was minutes away from playing in front of Kenyon Sr., who, along with other members of the Martin family, was in attendance for the Sixers’ battle against the Los Angeles Lakers at Crypto.com Arena.
The Sixers’ annual trips to California serve as homecomings for Martin, who grew up in the area. Plenty of people close to Martin were in the crowd, from Kenyon Sr. and other relatives to KJ's old friend Jack Flaherty — a World Series-winning starting pitcher for the 2024 Los Angeles Dodgers. (Prior to the interview beginning, Martin made an impassioned case that his Dodgers could repeat as champions in 2025 due to improved starting pitching health).
Martin sees the tremendous value that his father has as a resource, but remains compelled to do things his own way. He said Kenyon Sr. gives him the space he needs chart his own path.
"[I use it] as an advantage," Martin said. "Even to this day, he never oversteps his boundaries. He kind of lets me do my thing, and if I need help, I can ask him."
When the Sixers acquired Martin from the Los Angeles Clippers -- exactly one year and one week prior to this sit-down -- he was a 22-year-old with three years of experience playing heavy minutes on rebuilding Houston Rockets teams. He knew how to play NBA basketball, but had yet to be on a team that could consistently win NBA games.
So, what is the biggest difference between the person who showed up in Philadelphia and the one sitting in the visitor's locker room 373 days later?
"Obviously, I grew up a bunch," Martin said. "I thought I was already pretty mature for my age, but getting traded from Houston to LA, then being traded right at the beginning of the season here -- I think for anybody, it would be a lot to handle. Just being here last year, I didn't play that much, and that was my first time not really playing. Just me seeing the game from a different aspect helped me in a way. Obviously, I wanted to play, I wanted to compete. I felt like I could. Seeing the game from that angle helped me as a basketball player a lot, just understanding the game."
Last summer, Martin was traded for the first time, and he only played two games for the Clippers before being dealt again -- joining the Sixers a week into the 2023-24 season, missing out on training camp and preseason. This time around, there was no confusion about where Martin would be, and it has done wonders.
"Coming into this season, having training camp with this team, understanding the concepts that we had last year going into this year, it helped me a lot, for sure," Martin said.
What has also helped Martin is that he is quite possibly a 100th-percentile athlete. Once an NBA Dunk Contest participant, Martin's pregame warmup sessions are electric, and part of his appeal as a prospect and young player was the fact that he is capable of pulling off plays like these in games:
On the floor, though, Martin's first year in Philadelphia was underwhelming. He only played 715 regular season minutes with the team, more than three times fewer than his total in Houston (2,292) the year prior. The remarkable athletic feats seemed few and far between, too.
In a considerably smaller sample size in 2024-25, however, Martin has made many more highlight plays:
Does Martin feel like he has figured out how to utilize his outlier athletic tools in games more than he did a year ago?
"For sure."
Martin's rare gifts make him a unique chess piece for Sixers head coach Nick Nurse to move around. But his value does not just materialize through running fast or jumping high. Martin has learned how to leverage those abilities in a way that will translate to winning basketball plays.
"Everybody knows he's super athletic," Nurse said. "He can do stuff in the open floor, he's going to do some cutting, he can catch lobs, all of those things. And he's a pretty good matchup defensively."
If you ask Martin, however, he will tell you he does not believe that he is the one responsible for his improvement from year to year.
Who is?
"The players that are around me. I think it's the other players in the locker room," Martin said. "I understand them, I understand what their tendencies are, so I can go out there and play off them. That's probably the biggest thing."
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Speaking of Martin's teammates -- when the Sixers' locker room opens up before and after each game, if Martin is in there, odds are he is joking around with Tyrese Maxey. The two have grown extremely close.
"KJ is actually a good friend of mine," Maxey said before the start of the season. "So I talk to him a lot... I like KJ, man. I think he has the potential to be somebody special in this league. I was trying to tell him, James [Harden] and P.J. [Tucker] had a really special connection... I feel like we can have that same type of thing."
Like Kenyon Sr., Maxey is from Dallas, TX. Martin said Maxey's father coached at the high school where Kenyon Sr. once played growing up. Martin and Maxey would occasionally face each other for three or four years on the AAU circuit, Martin added, and Maxey said they frequently worked out together in preparation for the 2020 NBA Draft.
"We always knew of each other, knew each other, but when I came to the team, it was easy to connect with somebody like that," Martin said. "Same age, same high school class, someone you know. We could relate to each other. That's super dope, having somebody on the same path and journey."
On a Sixers team full of players who have been sidelined or underwhelming to date, Martin represents a bright spot. His impressive feel for the game -- perhaps aided by his NBA upbringing -- has helped him unlock some of the potential his athletic tools offer that he had not yet been able to tap into on a consistent basis.
Of course, there remains a ways to go for Martin to become the player he wants to be remembered as. But right now, he is exuding confidence that he is well on his way to arriving.
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