Veteran front office executive Jeff Weltman has officially joined the Toronto Raptors to serve as Masai Ujiri’s right-hand man.
“Jeff possesses a wealth of experience and a solid reputation in basketball circles,” Raptors general manager Masai Ujiri said in a statement. “I had the pleasure of working with Jeff in Denver and I’ve seen first-hand the basketball acumen he will bring to our staff.”
The Raptors’ new executive vice president, basketball operations joins the club following five seasons as assistant general manager with the Milwaukee Bucks.
Weltman spent one season in Detroit as the director of basketball administration before moving to Milwaukee in 2008. From 2001-06, Weltman served as the assistant general manager with the Denver Nuggets. He played a role in helping Ujiri join the Nuggets staff as an international scout.
In Denver, Weltman helped engineer personnel moves that shifted the Nuggets from a struggling team with no salary cap flexibility to one of the up-and-coming teams in the NBA. The Nuggets won 49 games in 2004-05 — at that time it was the fourth-most since the franchise joined the NBA in 1976. In 2003-04, the Nuggets posted the sixth-biggest turnaround in NBA history, improving their win total by 26 games and reaching the playoffs for the first time since 1995.
Weltman joined the Nuggets after serving 13 seasons with the Los Angeles Clippers, where he had served as director of player personnel since 1994. In that role, he oversaw the Clippers scouting department and contributed to many other aspects of the club’s day-to-day basketball operations. During his last season (2000-01), the Clippers improved their win total by 16 – the biggest turnaround in the league.
