Ujiri’s dismissal has more to do with business than basketball

TORONTO – Masai Ujiri represented something bigger than basketball for the Toronto Raptors and their fans and now he’s gone.

After 12 memorable years at the helm of Canada’s lone NBA franchise, his iconic tenure has come to an end, as Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment announced it was parting ways with the team president and vice-chairman on Friday.

According to MLSE president and CEO Keith Pelley, who held an impromptu press conference Friday afternoon, he and Ujiri had been discussing the 54-year-old executive’s future in Toronto for the past couple months, with the decision to make a change coming recently. The news came as a shock to many people around the league, including several rival execs who interacted with Ujiri in the lead up to this week’s NBA draft, per sources.

The surprise isn’t that it happened, it’s when it happened, coming the morning after the draft’s second round and just a few days before the start of free agency. Pelley noted that Ujiri had requested to stay on until after the draft, if a change was going to be made. And in some ways, a change felt like a distinct possibility, if not an inevitability, with Ujiri going into the final season of his high-priced five-year contract and the recent changes at MLSE – both in ownership and philosophy.

“Ujiri has had a monumental impact on the Raptors and on our community,” Pelley said. “His legacy will be indelibly etched in our city in perpetuity… We owe Masai a great deal of gratitude and wish him the very best moving forward. One thing we know [is] wherever Masai ends up, he will be successful.

“Today’s not an easy day, but as you know, change is never easy.”

So, why now? It’s a question that Pelley had trouble answering.

After a brief stint under Bryan Colangelo in the Raptors' front office from 2008-10, Ujiri was brought back to Toronto in 2013, fresh off an Executive of the Year award with the Denver Nuggets and ready to run the show. On its best day, the organization he took over was an NBA afterthought. They were stuck in a five-year playoff drought, which remains the longest in franchise history. They had only won a single postseason series in their entire existence and every star that ever wore the jersey had forced their way out the door.

In the decade-plus since, the Raptors have made the playoffs eight times, won nine series, and become NBA champions in 2019. There are a lot of players and people that deserve credit for the turnaround – including but not limited to Dwane Casey, Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan – but none more than Ujiri. He took a team that was mostly a punchline and turned it into a world-class, championship organization, while completely reshaping the culture, reinventing the brand, and changing the way people around basketball viewed the market. The resume speaks for itself.

But more than anything else, his legacy is the way he used his own pride and passion for the team, city, and country to change how the market viewed itself. The empowering speeches, his unapologetic defiance at the notion that Toronto was anything less than the other 29 franchises, We The North – that’s what will stand out, that’s what we’ll remember for a long time.

But nothing lasts forever. Over the past five years, the Raptors have gone 171-229 and qualified for the playoffs once. There have been missteps along the way; questionable asset management, poor communication, and internal development that stalled across the board. Rival execs have described Ujiri as being “hard to deal with,” citing an ego that has inflated with his success. 

Then, in the fall, it was announced that Rogers Communications would be buying out Bell’s stake of MLSE and becoming majority owners, with Larry Tanenbaum – chairman of the NBA Board of Governors and long-time Ujiri advocate – expected to divest his shares in the company later this year. In May, the new-look MLSE board parted ways with Toronto Maple Leafs president Brendan Shanahan after 11 seasons, indicating that they didn’t intend on filling the position. The writing seemed to be on the wall for Ujiri.

However, this wasn’t a basketball decision. If it were, Ujiri’s entire leadership team wouldn’t still be in place. Bobby Webster remains the team’s general manager and has been given a new contract extension. MLSE has also hired an executive search firm to find a replacement president. 

This was a business decision, which is reasonable; the NBA is a business, after all. The elephant in the room on Friday, the reason Ujiri was let go and the thing that Pelley couldn’t say into a microphone, is that this was a cost-cutting move, first and foremost.

Teams have been sniffing around Ujiri’s availability, as they always do when his contract is coming up – the Atlanta Hawks are the latest, as veteran NBA reporter Marc Stein reported in May. He would have had some leverage in contract negotiations and was surely looking for an expensive new deal. He was already one of the highest paid executives in professional sports, if not the highest paid, with his salary widely reported in the range of $15 million annually. 

The firing could have been deemed personal if Edward Rogers – the executive chairman of Rogers Communications, who reportedly tried to block Ujiri’s last contract extension in 2021 – didn’t also sign off on Shanahan’s dismissal. For what it’s worth, Pelley said the decision to move on from Ujiri was his own, supported by the MLSE board. Clearly, they don’t feel like anybody is worth that kind of money in that position. The safe bet is the next president of the Raptors, whoever it may be, will be making a fraction of what Ujiri made in the role.

Ujiri will be fine. He remains one of the most highly regarded and sought after execs in sports. He could take another job today if he wanted one or he can wait it out and hand pick his next opportunity, inside basketball or virtually anywhere else. The world is his oyster and he’s nothing if not patient.

The Raptors? Nothing really changes in the short term. The vision remains the same because the leadership team remains the same, except for the guy at the top. Webster and assistant general manager Dan Tolzman are experienced, well respected, and very, very smart. They’re tasked with continuing to rebuild this roster into one that can get back into the playoffs as early as next season. They’re more than capable.

But Ujiri’s presence was always felt and, as time goes on, so will his absence. He and his larger-than-life personality had become synonymous with the organization, not just with fans but for folks throughout the league. His rolodex could open almost any door. He commanded respect from players, agents, and his front office peers, whether they liked negotiating with him or not. For a lot of people in and around basketball, his was the face they associated with the Raptors. 

The counterpoint is that, thanks in large part to Ujiri’s efforts and impact, maybe they no longer need that kind of public-facing representative in the front office. One of Ujiri’s biggest strengths is knowing who to surround himself with. Webster and Tolzman – and Orlando Magic president Jeff Weltman before them – were the perfect complements. They’re smart and savvy but understated and comfortable sharing the spotlight or avoiding it altogether. The Raptors don’t need Webster to ham it up for the cameras, pound on the table and talk about how they’re going to win again in Toronto. Ideally, it’s a player who ultimately becomes the lasting face of the franchise.

Ujiri was always far more than the theatrics, anyway. He was at his absolute best when in a gym somewhere in North America or around the globe scouting young talent – that’s how he got his start in the league – or connecting with people on a human level; he’s a natural at it.

“Let's give Masai tremendous accolades for creating a brand and a culture, but the testament to that brand and the testament to a culture is how it lives once that individual is gone,” Pelley said. “And I believe that the culture and the brand that he's created will flourish.” 

Whoever takes over for him will have big shoes to fill. Webster will be interviewed for the president gig, according to Pelley. The concern, if he doesn’t get the job, is that it could make for an awkward situation where everyone knows he was passed over and he’ll have to report to the person that beats him out. How appealing would the position be for an external candidate, anyway, with a leadership team already in place and recently extended? This feels like a house of cards, precarious and on the cusp of toppling over if MLSE doesn’t know what it’s doing.

“It’s hard and I’m committed to it, to building the right culture and [finding] the right competitive players to contend and win championships,” said Pelley. “That’s the way I’ll be judged and that’s the way I should be judged. In order for that [to happen], you have to be prepared to make some tough decisions, you have to be prepared to make change. Change is hard, it really is hard, and this decision today is hard. It’s a tough decision but I think it’s the right decision for the Raptors at this time.”

It's going to take some time to get used to the idea that Ujiri is no longer running the Raptors. Make no mistake, this is the start of a new era and it’s not going to be easy to top the old era, the Ujiri era.