Can Ujiri climb out of his mess?
Raptors front office has made a series of missteps since winning a championship in 2019
This is new territory for Masai Ujiri, arriving at work every morning and encountering a mess of your own making.
When he took over the Raptors 11 years ago next month, the lessthan-stellar state of the franchise was the doing of Ujiri’s old mentor, Bryan Colangelo. And things weren’t nearly as bad as they first appeared. Ujiri’s initial plan to blow it up, famously skewered by an 11thhour nixing of a trade that would have sent Kyle Lowry to New York, morphed into the most successful era in franchise history.
And when Ujiri first made his bones as an NBA executive with the Nuggets, he didn’t exactly inherit a disaster. He took over a 53-win team in Denver, traded star Carmelo Anthony for a handsome return, and departed Colorado for Toronto in 2013 in the wake of a 57-win campaign.
But this — this is different. Most of five years removed from the glow of a championship, the 25-win season that concluded last week ranked as the fifth-worst in franchise history. And as much as an optimist can paint silver linings atop the bleakness, it’s clearly not a comfortable space to occupy.
“It’s my first time going through something like this,” Ujiri acknowledged. “Sometimes it’s unwatchable … We have to grind through it.”
Here’s the problem, though. This isn’t about one tanked season in which the injury list grew while Toronto’s odds in the draft lottery got better. This is about the five seasons since the championship, during which the Raptors have won a grand total of one playoff series and a painfully indecisive Ujiri has spun his executive wheels.
That’s just the facts. The Raptors are 194-196 since winning the title. And that’s including a 53-win title defence that was interrupted by COVID and fizzled in the second round of the Disney bubble.
Ujiri’s list of executive missteps over that span is considerable. He has waited too long to trade top players and ultimately received underwhelming returns (see: Pascal Siakam). He has lost franchise icons for nothing to free agency (see: Fred VanVleet). He has watched players the Raptors deemed to possess upside perform as though the Raptors got it wrong (see: Precious Achiuwa, acquired for all-time point guard Kyle Lowry). Oh, and as the NBA helpfully pointed out Wednesday, Ujiri also employed the first player in recent memory to be banned from the league for life for allegedly betting on NBA games, among other gambling-related no-nos.
It’s unfair to hang Jontay Porter’s alleged stupidity on Ujiri, of course.
The problem is, you can hang an awful lot of other stuff on the team president. Just ask him.
Ujiri took responsibility Wednesday for coach Darko Rajakovic’s dismal record.
“We’ve dealt him a tough hand, and that’s on us,” Ujiri said. “Outside of results, Darko did an incredible job.”
As in: Outside of the patient being dead, folks, the operation was a success.
Ujiri also took responsibility for the whiff of a free-agent signing that was Dennis Schroder, the German point guard coming off MVP honours at the FIBA World Cup and since traded to the Nets: “I think (it was) more our fault it didn’t work out.”
Ujiri didn’t even pass the buck on the ludicrous ticket-price increase coming to Raptorland.
“When these kinds of moves are made, you feel for the fans sometimes,” Ujiri said. “But this is how business works …”
Considering Ujiri spent a press conference earlier this season acknowledging his various miscalculations in the lead-up to trading Pascal Siakam for an underwhelming return — he copped to poor communication, but could have been convicted for another dismal read of the market — it would be fair for incoming MLSE CEO Keith Pelley to wonder what he is doing right. Scottie Barnes is the twoword answer.
We haven’t seen the once-clockwork stories about Ujiri being globally coveted. But turn that frown upside down, fans: Ujiri let slip his approval of a dog-and-pony show to fete the impending Hall of Fame induction of Vince Carter.
That, and everything else, has called into question the very foundations of the organization: the internal insistence that Toronto’s player-development program was peerless; the idea Toronto could turn non-shooters into shooters; the notion that the so-far fruitless clearing of decks for the second coming of a Kawhi Leonard trade amounted to anything more than a Jontay Porter-esque gamble. Those are the tent poles of Ujiri’s recent tenure. At the moment, the tent is pitched in muck.
Don’t get it wrong: The Raptors won’t be this bad next year. And that’s another part of the problem. Ujiri cast aside the core of a middleof-the-road playoff team to arrive at this point. And if all goes well next year, the Raptors project to be a slightly less impressive middleof-the-road playoff team, albeit with more expensive tickets. Except the years keep piling up. And the path to something superior remains elusive.
“I’m still Masai,” Ujiri self-referenced Wednesday. “Nothing is going to f---ing change that. I guarantee you that.”
The championship swagger remains, even as the championship memory fades.
‘‘ I’m still Masai. Nothing is going to f---ing change that. I guarantee you that.
MASAI UJIRI