SIMMONS: Firing Masai Ujiri is a huge mistake by MLSE
You don't fire Masai Ujiri.
Not now. Not ever.
You don't sack this man of integrity and character, who changed basketball in Canada, who changed the way in which the Raptors are perceived, who brought a certain cachet to the sport, his love of Africa and his pride in everything that is Canadian basketball.
You don't fire him. Not under these murky and unspoken circumstances. Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment CEO Keith Pelley couldn't easily explain why Ujiri was being let go Friday as president of the Raptors. Instead, he clumsily tripped over words that made no sense, answering little that was asked directly about the dismissal of the most important Raptor in the history of the franchise.
Sounding more Peddie than Pelley, the CEO went through the how's and why's of Ujiri being replaced without ever really explaining why.
What made less sense: Ujiri is out as president and he will be eventually replaced, Bobby Webster has a new deal as general manager and the front office staff of the Raptors has been retained. 'Change,' said Pelley, 'is inevitable. Thirteen seasons is a long time in a sports leadership role.'
And then he explained what needed further explanation. He let Ujiri work the NBA draft for Toronto, knowing he was leaving the franchise. And that makes no sense. If he was being pushed out, they should have done so before the draft, not after it.
And if the franchise isn't in great shape leadership-wise, why fire the president but retain the general manager and not only retain the GM, but extend him.
All of this happening with Ujiri having one year remaining on his contact, due a 2% raise this coming season, and with a $1-million payment due to Giants of Africa, Ujiri's charity, very shortly.
Pelley insisted the decision to fire Ujiri was his. Others outside the organization are not so convinced. 'Edward Rogers did this,' said a basketball insider. 'He doesn't like Masai. If Larry Tanenbaum was still in charge, Masai would still be running the Raptors.'
It was Masai's way — his way or the highway — in his 13 years on the job. And many memories of all that made him different and special.
♦ ♦ ♦
In his first summer on the job in 2013, before the Raptors had played a single game under his leadership, Ujiri flew to Philadelphia for only one reason.
He wanted to meet Kyle Lowry and get to know him — and find out whether he was worth keeping. He also wanted to shake him up just a little.
'How do you want to be perceived in the NBA?' he asked Lowry rather pointedly. Because back then, Ujiri suggested to the veteran point guard, you're wasting your career and most people look at you as a loser.
The two went at it chapter and verse. With Ujiri tearing into Lowry, and Lowry from a position of weakness, trying to fight back. Whatever it was, Ujiri wasn't convinced he had a winner in Lowry.
A few months after that, he thought he had a deal made to send Lowry to the New York Knicks. The deal was agreed upon along with the notion the Raptors would tank the season, looking to draft Canadian Andrew Wiggins in the first round of 2014.
But the owner of the Knicks, James Dolan, called the deal off.
The tanking of that season never happened. The Raptors won 48 games, the first of seven straight seasons making the playoffs. Lowry, the born hot-head, became the unlikely leader and best player for the Raptors. He would later attribute his change in career success to everything Masai had done for him. And the two even worked through and lived though a season in which they barely spoke to each other.
Ujiri had traded Lowry's best friend, DeMar DeRozan, to San Antonio in a franchise-altering deal for Kawhi Leonard.
He made the deal while telling DeRozan he wasn't going to trade him. Lowry, who had difficulty seeing beyond his own nose at times, didn't recognize he was playing for the best team of his time in Toronto.
The two made up before the championship celebration in June of 2019.
Lowry is expected to be the next Raptor to have his jersey retired by the team. A long time after having lunch — and being scolded — in Philadelphia.
♦ ♦ ♦
Leonard wanted to be traded — just not to Toronto. Not to Canada. Not to anywhere cold. Not to anywhere where he didn't have approval of his destination.
The first time Leonard met with Ujiri after the deal for DeRozan was done, he asked a rather pointed question to Masai.
'Why did you trade for me?' said Leonard, who had played just nine games the year before the Spurs.
Ujiri answered rather quickly: 'Because I think you're the best player in the NBA.'
For a few seconds, there was just silence, which is something you come to expect being around Leonard, who was staring at Ujiri. And Ujiri was staring right back at Leonard.
That year, with load management factoring into everything the Raptors did, Kawhi played just 60 regular season games for Toronto, hit the shot of all shots to win a playoff series against Philadelphia, had an incredible double overtime playoff win on an injured leg against Milwaukee and was named Finals MVP when the Raptors beat Golden State for their only NBA championship. Leonard had proven to be what Ujiri told he was when he first acquired him.
When he played, he was the best player in the NBA. The Raptors will forever have a championship with his autograph all over it. The trade no one saw coming — the great gamble sending an established star in DeRozan for the question that was Leonard — proved to be the best work of Ujiri's time with the Raptors.
♦ ♦ ♦
The Raptors won 59 games in 2018, the most wins in franchise history. Before that, coach Dwane Casey had a tremendous run of 48-49-56-51 wins. That year, he was named coach of the year.
The league named him that. On his own team, from his own manager, there were questions. By the time the playoffs ended that season, Casey and Ujiri were no longer speaking to each other.
The animosity of year-after-year playoff failures — most of it coming against LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers — had hardened both men.
Casey was named coach of the year and Ujiri did what has almost never been done in basketball history. He fired the coach of the year. He thought Casey had taken the team as far as he could.
Ujiri had a coach in mind to replace Casey, but Mike Budenholzer wound up in Milwaukee instead of Toronto. In what seemed like a guess at the time — who knew, really? — Ujiri hired assistant coach Nick Nurse to replace the coach of the year Casey. Nurse had been on almost no one's radar around the NBA. He'd kicked around basketball circles forever as an assistant or minor league head coach.
This was his first chance at head coaching in the NBA. He distinguished himself early on as the Raptors won the title in 2019. Nurse lasted five seasons in Toronto with a .582 winning percentage and coaching in 41 playoff games.
He was let go at the end of the 2023 season, when he and Ujiri seemed philosophically heading in different directions.
♦ ♦ ♦
I can still smell the locker room from the celebration of 2019 in Oakland. That stays with you after all these years. There was champagne spraying. There was plastic covering everywhere you looked. There were safety goggles if you wanted to protect your eyes. And everywhere, there was champagne spraying.
It's the kind of smell you never forget and the soaking wet Raptors were engaging in hugs and high-fives and family photos for anyone who was there.
Masai Ujiri couldn't have been prouder that night, even if he later talked about being assaulted.
We sat with him in what was probably the quietest corner of all the bedlam after the Raptors championship victory over the Golden State Warriors.
He cried a little bit, he smiled a lot, he seemed to enjoy being surrounded by the media people who had either become friends or advocates or critics or all of that over the years. That's what happens when you cover a team honestly.
There are good days and there are bad days and there are good relationships and bad relationships and often with the same people.
Masai had promised a championship when he first came to Toronto. Sometimes it sounds like predictable rhetoric when you hear that kind of talk.
From him, though, coming to Toronto, coming to a place known for NBA failure, coming to a place where being irrelevant was just part of the show, he sounded more believable than the usual salesman stuff you hear.
And I reminded him of that in the winning locker room.
'You told us this was coming and we didn't believe you,' I remember saying to Masai.
He told us to 'f— Brooklyn. He sold us on We The North. We taught us about belief and hope, trust and care. And every time I saw him and spoke to him, spent any time with him, it didn't matter the circumstances, that proved to be a better day.
The championship in 2019 was his first. It wouldn't be his last, he said.
One day, the next one may come. Just not here. Not anymore.
Word began to spread Friday morning that Ujiri was out as Raptors president, weeks after first learning about it.
Twenty-six years after the Blue Jays won their second World Series, the Raptors had a title to call their own. Three titles for Toronto in North America's big four sports.
In 129 seasons of combined NHL hockey, NBA basketball and Major League Baseball since the Maple Leafs last won the Stanley Cup and Toronto arrived on the scene, the Raptors had their own championship.
A championship written and directed by Masai Ujiri.
A championship celebrated all across Canada, never to be forgotten again.
ssimmons@postmedia.com
X: @simmonssteve
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