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Fred VanVleet: “The only funny thing is when I was in Toronto and uh like Masai just moved like Batman. Like he’s just like a super boss. So he come in and out and he wasn’t real like active in day-to-day practices and [__] like that. But he was just real executive like. But man, around this time of the year he come in — he’d be there. And he walk around that gym on that phone.” “Man, listen. [laughter] You working out in the morning before practice start and that man walking around the baseline, walking around the gym, working that phone, coming in out of that office. M— is like, ‘Man, somebody getting traded today.’ And more often than not, he didn’t do nothing. Like he was real not — you know, not active at the deadline for my years that I was there.”
On “The Program with Woj,” host Adrian Wojnarowski interviewed Somalia Men’s National Basketball Team coach Dalmar Ali to learn more about his experience as the new leader of the Somalian National Team. Ali credited former Raptors exec Masai Ujiri for inspiring him to use a career in basketball for the greater good. “Ujiri is the reason why I really found that this orange ball that we hold every day can really change someone’s life,” Ali said. “... I look at him as one of us because not only as a Torontonian, but he’s from the continent of Africa. ... To see him be passionate about this thing and try to show that people that no matter where you’re from in the world, you can be successful ... I said, ‘You know what? I’m going to use this orange ball and I’m going to change people’s lives with it.’”
A winter afternoon in Salt Lake City might be the last setting where you’d expect to find a celebration of Afrobeats, a musical meshing of West African rhythms and styles. But in Utah in 2023, a medley by the Nigerian singers Tems, Burna Boy and Rema at halftime of the N.B.A. All-Star Game showed that American sports leagues were embracing the genre. “I was just so proud to see our own playing on that stage,” said Masai Ujiri, then the president of the Toronto Raptors, who was raised in Nigeria and takes dance lessons to the music about once a week. Afrobeats had been part of track and field and soccer culture by that point, but its influence on the sports world has only grown since.
Marc Stein: Now, to this point, I’m told there has not been a search firm identified. That still could happen, but they’re going to have to decide what kind of GM they want to bring in. Do you want someone with a big name and a big reputation? Like, I think Bobby Karalla has been saying—Masai Ujiri would be high on his list. Masai is obviously available. Or are you looking for a different kind of GM? That’s the thing—we don’t really know yet what exactly they’re looking for in terms of the permanent successor. But you know, it’s not going to happen overnight. A search is going to be required, and an in-season search was not the anticipation. So Riccardi and Finley are your interim GMs. But again, I think Jason Kidd is going to have a significant level of input.
Josh Lewenberg: Bobby Webster on Masai Ujiri: "He's incredibly supportive. He wants us all to succeed... I kept him up to date on the process. Looking back, it was a really good pairing. A kid from Africa and a kid from Hawaii worked really well for a while."
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The former Toronto Raptors president was appointed as a United Nations sustainable goals development advocate on Thursday, according a release sent out by Giants of Africa. Ujiri, who parted with the Raptors in June, will join a group of international leaders in the SDG group, which aims to end global poverty and hunger while increasing well-being and education.
Masai Ujiri will spend the run-up to NBA training camps expanding his global horizons on another of his passions. The former president and vice-chair of the Raptors has been appointed a sustainable development goal advocate by United Nations secretary António Guterres, the group announced Thursday.
It didn’t come as a surprise to people around the NBA that the Raptors ultimately named general manager Bobby Webster their permanent head of basketball operations, Jake Fischer of Bleacher Report said in a live stream on Wednesday (YouTube link). In fact, according to Fischer, the only surprise during the process was that Toronto publicly announced a search for a new top executive after parting ways with president Masai Ujiri. “Someone I consult with who is involved in (executive) search firm stuff was taken aback by the fact that was even put out publicly,” Fischer said. “He was taking it – and the league was taking it – as a foregone conclusion that Bobby Webster would be running the show.”
The Raptors, who traded away Pascal Siakam and OG Anunoby during the 2023/24 season, have missed the playoffs for three straight seasons, but the expectation is that they’ll be more competitive going forward, per Fischer. “The Raptors have definitely been given some type of formal pressure, some type of direction from their new leadership of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment to end this sort of rebuild era they’ve been in,” Fischer said, adding that the team will be aiming to claim a top-six playoff spot this season, not simply make the play-in tournament.
According to multiple sources, some of the external candidates that were interviewed for the president position pushed back on recent roster decisions made by Ujiri and his front office. One went as far as calling the trade to acquire Ingram in February a “desperate Hail Mary.” They questioned the team’s post-championship leadership and internal development and pointed out its salary crunch – going into the new season with the league’s eighth-highest payroll despite winning 55 games over the past two years and having the 21st-highest projected win total for the 2025-26 campaign, per FanDuel.
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A new $26 million sports-themed hotel in Rwanda that aims to tap into the country’s growing hospitality market will be a template for expanding other sporting businesses across Africa, the former National Basketball Association executive that spearheaded the project told Semafor. Masai Ujiri, former vice president of NBA franchise Toronto Raptors and a retired basketball player, plans to build a collection of hotels in Africa following the opening of Zaria Court, his company’s first hotel property, in the Rwandan capital Kigali in July.
When I was in Las Vegas for Summer League, the first questions anyone from other organizations or other NBA media had for me centred around Ujiri: why MLSE president Keith Pelley decided to let him go and what Ujiri will do next. The first part has been well-covered, but the latter not as much. The short answer to that is: whatever he wants. He had one year left on a five-year deal that averaged around $15 million per season, and coming off the most successful run in Raptors history, he was able to negotiate some significant long-term incentives that track the increase in the franchise’s value. He won’t need to work anytime soon, and I will be very surprised if he takes a job in the NBA this season.
Longer term? He would be an attractive candidate to head an expansion team, which is now firmly on the NBA’s radar, or could be an intriguing choice to run the NBA’s proposed addition of an NBA-sanctioned league in Europe. In the meantime, Ujiri would be an obvious candidate for leadership roles as they open across the NBA, with some league insiders keeping an eye on the Miami Heat, given that Heat president Pat Riley recently turned 80.