TORONTO – Masai Ujiri is a people person and a family man. He’s built the Toronto Raptors in that image. When you walk towards the dressing room at the Air Canada Centre the family room is on the left and is typically teeming with young kids, Ujiri’s among them. As you walk into the room itself on the right-hand side is a panel of white tiles with inlays of pictures of the Raptors players and staff and their families.
In an era when the collision of increasingly hard salary caps and the rise of increasingly sophisticated analytical tools has made the commoditization of players ever more routine, the Raptors president and general manager loathes referring to “our guys” as assets to be bought and sold and moved around dispassionately.
But that’s his job. He knows it and doesn’t shy away from it. In the space of two years he’s assembled a deep, young team that’s on the rise but with too many good players and not enough to spend on them.
Short of him being able to pull some kind of hometown discount rabbit out his hat the Raptors team that finished second in the East and earned the respect of LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers will look different at training camp in October. How different depends on how clever Ujiri can be with the chess pieces whose kids play with his kids.
“We were brought here to do that,” said Ujiri at his end-of-season wrap-up on Monday. “Some things are more difficult than others. To me, the approach is, our guys have said they want to be here.
“You build your culture and your team and you try to learn how to win and build winning, and that attracts players and makes players want to stay here. That’s the first step. It’s put on my table and the guys in the front office to figure it out. We’ll try to figure it out.”
Unlike in past years Ujiri’s list of off-season priorities is obvious and fairly short, although that can change.
His head coach, Dwane Casey, was on relatively thin ice this time a year ago after the Washington Wizards swept the Raptors. Ujiri saw through the noise, provided Casey with some tougher-minded players with a commitment to defence and Casey delivered the best season the franchise has ever had. The Raptors hold Casey’s option but there is no doubt that will be ripped up and he’ll be rewarded with a lucrative long-term deal.
“Coach Casey’s our coach for the future,” Ujiri said, aware that it could require a three-year deal worth more than $15 million to make it so. “That’s very easy for us to figure out. That will be done in our sleep.”
The questions get harder after that.
One of Ujiri’s masterstrokes last summer was signing Bismack Biyombo to a two-year deal worth $6 million, total. After a career-year and at times electrifying playoff performances Biyombo is expected to opt out of the second year of his deal and will likely get offers starting at $15 million a year.
Given Jonas Valanciunas is already slated to earn $16 million a year to be the starting centre – and Ujiri was unequivocal in saying the big Lithuanian has earned a bigger role – can the Raptors really tie up more than $30 million at one position, even if the salary cap does rise to the $92 million that is projected?
Oh, and while Ujiri swears those that hold purse strings at MLSE are willing to pay the luxury tax for the first time in franchise history, it’s not something that matters with regards to Biyombo – since he’s only spent one season in Toronto the team doesn’t own his “Bird rights,” the salary cap exception that allows teams to incur luxury tax penalties for signing their own free agents over the salary cap.
No, to keep the family together, Ujiri is going to have to cajole some sacrifices out of those that are staying or trim the flock.
They are the kind of choices that tear at him. The first time he was asked Monday about bringing back DeMar DeRozan on a max contract – the Raptors can offer him five years and $147 million, compared with four years and $107 million from other teams – Ujiri sounded like a businessman, refusing to paint himself in a corner.
“We’ll have those discussions,” he said, in reference to his team’s longest-serving player. “Our organization, I think, has showed that we want to win. Those are, I think, negotiations that we’ll have with DeMar and his agent, and we’ll see where it goes.”
Keeping DeRozan could mean sacrificing Biyombo or trading Terrence Ross or future draft picks – the Raptors have four first-rounders in the next two years, including the No. 9 selection this June.
But the next time Ujiri answered a DeRozan question he sounded like an anxious patriarch, trying to do the right thing for his family.
“I have to figure it out … but our number one goal is to bring DeMar back here,” Ujiri said. “We feel great that he wants to come back to our organization.
“I spoke to him yesterday and his eyes were still red – you could tell. He said he felt empty the next day, which was telling. … There’s that hunger, and you like that, and then now, it’s my part to figure it out.”
At the end of the best season in Raptors history these are good problems to have.
But for Ujiri, they’re still problems.
