Raps’ boss sorry, will ‘celebrate’ DeRozan’s time
Masai Ujiri knows full well there’s a significant human cost to a blockbuster sports transaction involving the trade of a beloved veteran player. And he understands that he could have better handled some aspects of DeMar DeRozan’s departure from the Toronto Raptors.
It has left the team president a bit shaken and a lot apologetic, not for making a deal he feels improves his team but because he had to cut adrift a player of DeRozan’s stature in what was a necessarily callous manner.
What was said or wasn’t said in a private conversation will stay between DeRozan and Ujiri for now, the president said, but he took a chance Friday to try to salvage that relationship.
He immediately offered an apology to DeRozan.
And he said the franchise would “celebrate him in the best possible way we can, I promise you that.”
“I think maybe my mistake was talking about what we expected going forward from him,” Ujiri said Friday in his first public statement about the jarring trade of DeRozan, Jakob Poeltl and a draft pick for Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green of the San Antonio Spurs. “Not necessarily talking about a trade but what I expect from him going forward and I think that’s where the gap was, because in my job I always have to assume that I’m going forward with the team that I have.
“If there was a miscommunication there, I do apologize to DeMar and his family and his representation. It’s not what I meant. These things come and go, opportunities come and go, and we have to react ... I had to react at this time.”
Sources close to DeRozan felt misled by Ujiri about the possibility of a deal involving the nine-year veteran who wanted to spend his entire career in To- ronto. Those feelings haven’t abated since Wednesday’s franchise-altering transaction.
Shortly before news of the trade became public, DeRozan lashed out on Instagram.
“Be told one thing & the outcome another,” DeRozan said in an Instagram story posted in the wee hours Wednesday morning. “Can’t trust em. Ain’t no loyalty in this game. Sell you out quickly for a little bit of nothing.”
After Friday’s news conference, DeRozan posted an Instagram story with just a facepalm emoji in it.
But what Ujiri called “miscommunication” could simply have been a misunderstanding of words and time. What was said, what was meant, what was heard, what was reality were perhaps at cross-purposes. “When I met with Aaron (Goodwin, one of DeRozan’s agents) at summer league, maybe my mistake was saying there was nothing imminent at the time,” Ujiri said. “I acknowledge that. If it was a mistake I apologize to them, but at the time we were fourth in the ranks of trying to get anything done (involving Leonard and the Spurs) and I didn’t see anywhere where the talks were going. That’s the message I delivered. It’s my job to always go to these guys and always talk about the team as it is.”
Whether or not Ujiri can repair his relationship with DeRozan is debatable but it’s not the biggest thing the team president has to deal with on the “human” side of the sport.
Leonard, hardly one of the more loquacious players in the league, must now be sold on a new organization, new city, new country.
Even if he is only a one-year rental — Leonard can become an unrestricted free agent next July — Ujiri has to figure out how to make him comfortable in Toronto.
“That’s my job and I think that’s why I’m in this seat, is to try and figure that part out,” the president said. “I’ve had conversations with Kawhi, with his agent, with his uncle, and everything has gone well. I’m looking forward to meeting with them face to face.
“That’s our responsibility … to figure it out and to make them as comfortable as possible and, on his part, hear more on what he wants in our team, in the future, and go from there. I take responsibility for that and I’m confident. I think we have a good game plan and we’ll see how that goes.”
Leonard and Green are due to finish physicals this weekend to officially complete the transaction. And, eventually, the story will turn to basketball more than personalities and relationships. The bottom-line business of the game will come to the fore.
“Sports is about winning and I have a mandate to win and that’s what I want to do, is win, to win a championship, (put) the Toronto Raptors in a position to win a championship, but I really do acknowledge there’s no measurement for what DeMar DeRozan has done for this organization,” Ujiri said.
“Hopefully, on paper, we feel we have a team that can compete in the East and maybe hopefully compete … for a championship in this league.
“That’s why we play, that’s why we play sports, to win and play for a championship.”