RAPTORS DECISIONS
GM Ujiri will make mark
Masai Ujiri committed to nothing, which was no surprise: He had no incentive to do so.
You never get the unfiltered truth in the NBA. However, the Toronto Raptors general manager, giving his post-mortem on a promising season that devolved into a fivealarm fire, had even less of a cause for honesty than usual.
His roster had just been exposed for the whole league to see, and his coach, whether the blame should fall on Dwane Casey or not, was unable to stop, or even slow, the unravelling. There was nothing to be accomplished by Ujiri criticizing the players or any part of the organization. The collective value of this unit was already low enough without its architect — or, at least, the person who chose not to disassemble it — piling on.
“You guys know me: There’s no knee-jerk reaction here,” Ujiri said. “We’re going to be patient. I think that’s going to be our nature of building here.”
What followed was an avalanche of hedging and tire-pumping: Ujiri was going to evaluate the status of Casey over the next few weeks, believed Kyle Lowry could hold up physically over an entire season, thought Jonas Valanciunas made some promising steps and could thrive in today’s faster NBA, felt that Terrence Ross’s third season was something less than catastrophic, and so on.
Really, there were only two firm declarations: He is done swearing before each post-season begins — commissioner Adam Silver, Raptors adviser Wayne Embry and Ujiri’s wife all scolded him for it — and that the Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment board has cleared the Raptors to purchase their own D-League team, something that is badly overdue. Ujiri did not commit to the Raptors having their own affiliate for next season, but said he was “hoping and pushing” for it. And that was it.
Whether or not he ever comes out and says it, though, this summer will definitely give us more insight into what Ujiri believes about this team and this league. Up until now, Ujiri has been short on philosophical declarations. Beyond committing to developing young players on the end of the bench, something he said in his introductory news conference in June 2013, and showing he has a preference for versatile athletes with endless wingspans — he tried to acquire a first-round pick in 2013 to draft Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo, and used the Raptors’ pick in 2014 on the previously unknown Bruno Caboclo — Ujiri has been very measured during his time in Toronto, save for all of the unprintable words.
That is why Ujiri kept last year’s team together, committing for as short as possible to the group in the process. He wanted to give that team another platform to try to grow. It is why he did not alter a flawed team at the trade deadline, too.
“I want to know our players. ... Not doing anything gave us the opportunity to know our players, to really, really know them.”
No matter the nature of his decisions, we are going to learn infinitely more about what Ujiri believes in than we have so far during his tenure in charge in Toronto. Because whatever Ujiri truly believes in, it cannot be what we just witnessed unfold.