How Masai Ujiri Builds a Team

One of the most highly regarded free agents in the N.B.A. last summer was a six-foot-five, fifty-one-year-old Nigerian Canadian who last played professional basketball in Denmark, nearly twenty years ago. A few years ago, the Washington Wizards were reported to be preparing to offer him ownership equity in their team, in addition to around ten million dollars a year. This was right after Ujiri turned the Raptors into title winners, in 2019. This past summer, it was reported that the interest in him extended beyond the N.B.A. But, in August, Toronto announced that Ujiri would return to the Raptors, as president and vice-chairman.

Ujiri, who was born in the United Kingdom and moved to Nigeria when he was young, came to Toronto in 2013, after being named the N.B.A.’s Executive of the Year, as the general manager of the Denver Nuggets. In Toronto, he took a losing team, known mostly for its cold climate, and turned it into a perennial playoff contender. Then, somewhat controversially, Ujiri traded DeMar DeRozan, an All-Star who had embraced Toronto and was beloved by the team’s fan base, for Kawhi Leonard, a superstar coming off an injury. Leonard led the Raptors to the franchise’s only championship. He left after the season, though, and then came the pandemic. The N.B.A. played a season in the “bubble,” in Florida; when the next season arrived the Canadian border was still shut, and the team stayed in Tampa, even as other franchises went home. The Raptors struggled, and now the team’s other longtime star, Kyle Lowry, who became close with DeRozan, is gone, too, to Miami. The Raptors seem poised for another rebuilding phase—and yet they recently won five games in a row, driven in part by the electric play of a rookie, Scottie Barnes.

It is rare for a front-office executive to be the face of a team, but Ujiri’s prominence is not only the result of his teams’ on-court success. His nonprofit, Giants of Africa, runs a system of well-regarded camps across the continent, and he has been increasingly important in growing the game’s presence there. Giants of Africa recently announced a commitment to build a hundred new courts. Ujiri has also become one of the league’s most articulate advocates of racial justice. He has his own powerful example of injustice to draw upon: in the moments after the Raptors’ championship win, over the Golden State Warriors, Ujiri was walking onto the court to celebrate when a sheriff’s deputy stopped him. The deputy later said that Ujiri had refused to show his credentials, twice, and had then shoved and punched him, causing injuries to his chin, head, jaw, and teeth. The deputy sued Ujiri, who filed a countersuit; body-cam footage showed that it was the deputy who had shoved Ujiri, twice, hard, before Ujiri, who had been trying to show his credentials, pushed back. Both men dropped their suits.

I spoke twice with Ujiri around the start of the season, the second time shortly after he had returned from Nigeria, where Giants of Africa had opened four new courts. The day before, the Toronto Star had reported that Edward Rogers, a telecommunications executive who is one of the Raptors’ co-owners, had resisted the team’s efforts to retain Ujiri, and had, in fact, called Ujiri to tell him that he wasn’t worth the money. (Rogers told the Star that he has the “utmost respect for Masai Ujiri,” and lamented that private board proceedings had become public.) Rogers was overruled by the governing owner, Larry Tanenbaum. When we spoke, Ujiri demonstrated an effective executive’s considerable skills in discretion and in deftly dissolving controversy on a range of subjects, from Rogers to player empowerment. Our conversations have been edited for length and clarity.

How was your trip to Nigeria?

Nigeria is where I’m from. It was a whole lot of energy. Opening those four courts, it was so exciting.

Your camps are well known, but what drove the shift into investing in the infrastructure?

During COVID, the funding I used to do the basketball camps and travel and tours was sitting there. So one day I just said, “Let’s use it to build courts.” Courts are very expensive to do if you want to do them well. Sometimes people think it’s just going to lay concrete down, just because it’s Africa. But we’re trying to encourage the growth of the game, and so we want to do it really well.

Infrastructure has become so big on the continent. I keep talking about “We need to build infrastructure.” If I don’t do it first, who is going to do it? It’s the same concept I use with respect for women. When I had boys’ camps for many years, I always told the campers, “You have to respect your mom, respect your sister, respect your girlfriend.” But then I was thinking, If I want to push this, then I have to have a girls’ camp right beside them. And so I’m learning myself. If I’m going to talk about how these things are needed, as I get more opportunity and a platform, I need to do these things, too.

Growing up in Nigeria, where soccer was king, how did you end up playing basketball?

I started playing soccer. There, it’s soccer right away—outside, kicking a tennis ball, kicking anything that’s round. We used to go play soccer on the primary-school pitch, and we had to walk across the university to get to my primary school. We’d have to walk through the basketball courts to get to where we played soccer, and we’d always use the soccer ball to shoot hoops. Then we’d do it every day. It started taking longer and longer. It became less soccer and more basketball, and we started looking for a basketball. I started asking my mom for a basketball, for basketball shoes. We’d go to play early in the afternoon, because in the evening the university players, the better players, came to play. I think I was between eleven and twelve. I met Oliver Johnson, an American who was coaching at the university. He started doing little camps here and there.

The N.B.A. recently announced a big investment in Africa, called N.B.A. Africa. Are you a part of that?

I’m on the board of N.B.A. Africa. Adam Silver has taken it to another level: where we wanted to start a league, now we want to build this whole ecosystem. We could build the business side of it, and make this whole huge ecosystem that the Western world has—you know, the N.C.A.A., the N.B.A. Why can’t we have that there, when we actually have the talent?

Sometimes, getting involved in other countries—we know what happened in China. Obviously, this is a different situation, and with very different challenges. But what do you see as some of the challenges that the N.B.A. should be thinking about?

People think of Africa as a country, but it is a continent—it’s different countries that have different governance, different rules, different regulations. The N.B.A. has this unique opportunity. If we do things honestly through sports, even if it’s sports as a business, whether it’s generating revenue, whether it’s building or growing talent, whether it’s directly helping the community—all of this will work out, because sports bring us together in a unique way, and they open doors for us. I understand what went on in China. The humanity aspect of who we are as people is going to be in the forefront of what we do. And I think everybody means well in this.

I take what you’re saying, but I think, with China, there was some tension between the values of the league running up against the values of the business partners, in a sense. And, when that tension came to the forefront, there was a muddled response, to put it kindly. Is that something that you guys are talking about?

I understand that, yeah, there could be tensions. Things are going to go wrong. We are going to say controversial things. How do you fix them? We have to take risks sometimes, but we have to be responsible, too.

Can you speak a little bit more personally about what it’s like when you head back home? The cliché is that sports are a part of identity building—people cheer for their home-town team, and it gives them a sense of belonging. But sports are increasingly global, and the N.B.A. is a global game.

I feel Africa, I feel Nigeria, I feel Canada. I’m a son of the continent. Many years ago, I was doing my camps in Nigeria, and then something happened where we had an issue with a facility. I was totally shut out from the facility we’re supposed to be using. I was frustrated. I was angry. I have these kids, these coaches that have come to run this camp, we’ve spent this money, and now we’re losing a couple of days because they double-booked this place. And so I said, “I’m going to another country. My mom is from Kenya, so let me go and explore Kenya.” People were so welcoming, and then I thought, O.K., maybe I can do one in Rwanda. So welcoming—they take me as a citizen of their country. I went to Ghana. I went to Senegal, where I’ve been going for years, because one of my best friends, Amadou Fall, is from Senegal. I started exploring all these places.

When we won the championship, I had the Nigerian flag, and I was representing Canada. I truly feel that I have that sense of responsibility. My kids were born here. Maybe I can speak from both sides of my mouth and say, you know, with players, as professionals, “Anywhere we are put to work, we have to go work.”

My wife’s mom is from Sierra Leone, and her dad is from Guinea. My wife came to America when she was thirteen years old, so she has American citizenship. I was born in England and lived there until I was nine months, and then moved back to Nigeria. So I have British citizenship. I have Canadian citizenship. My kids are born in Canada and have American citizenship. How complicated is this? And how many passports can we put on the table? And that explains, to me, why I see myself maybe as a son of the world, in some way.

The Raptors just played their first game in Canada in a long, long, long, long time. What was that like?

When I watch the games at the arena, I sit in a room with our video guys. I don’t sit down in the main bowl. Even the attendants that work with us, I just wanted to give them the biggest hugs. All of these guys, they’ve become a part of your life. You want to hug them.

Tampa was great—they were great to us. But, no, thank you. All due respect. Couldn’t ask for anything better from how people treated us, but there’s nothing like home. To feel our arena, its feel, smell, everything—we could play a million games and win how many, lose how many, it doesn’t matter. Just to come back and feel that meant the whole world to us.

Is that true for your players, too? You are a Canadian citizen, but some of them probably liked the Florida weather more.

No, no, no. Trust me. O.G. [Anunoby], Fred [VanVleet], Pascal [Siakam], all of these guys—we talk about these things.

Was that a surprise, and did it impact, from your perspective, the play on the court?

Yes. We don’t use it as an excuse, but there’s just so many things that you don’t even think of when you have to resettle or relocate or be displaced, however you want to put it. I’ll give you an example. You go and play in Tampa—it’s not a basketball city, you know? You’re not getting Raptors fans or Canadians. It’s usually your road fans. All of these people are interested in coming to the game to see their favorite team, or they’re coming to see their favorite star. There’s basically no home-court advantage.

I remember one particular game. We’re playing, and we were up on Boston—I think it was, like, 29–13 in the first quarter. Then all of a sudden the crowd just starts cheering for Boston to come back. And all the players are looking, like, What’s going on here? It just didn’t sit right. Would that ever happen in Toronto? Never.

Maybe it’s wrong for me to think that way. But if you start to think about all the other things. . . . During COVID, you’re not in your home. Now you think of your staff: Can they afford to bring their families to Tampa? Somebody’s family is back home. The wife is not there, or the husband is not there, to help in these times, like, with homeschooling. Usually your kids are at school, you know? So, all those little things, it became so much. For people like myself, we can manage. But some of these guys are rookies on our team. They had never even been to Canada.

How has it felt now that the season is back? You just had a tough loss against the Bulls.

I think we have—how many guys are twenty, twenty-two years old? Precious Achiuwa is twenty-two. Scottie Barnes is twenty. It’s a young team. We expect this. This is the growth and building path we have to take. It’s a little bit different from where we’ve been. I think moving to Florida set us back a little bit—I told ownership that it set us back a couple of years. But we’ll build this young team. We’re happy with the talent.

The N.B.A. is a players’ league, and player empowerment is a huge theme of the last five to ten years. Have the dynamics changed a lot since you were at the Nuggets? Now there are these big, public trade demands.

In my opinion, the toughest situations that we all have to deal with are when a player leaves an organization, and when a player is traded. You build a culture where you try to be as honest as you possibly can, and treat these players in the best possible way. If you can treat these players with respect, and you develop relationships with them, then it makes it a little bit—not easier, but at least you can feel, in your heart, you have communicated.

What was it like watching DeMar DeRozan come back, playing for the Bulls, and being a big part of why they won?

DeMar is an incredible player. We just reached a point where we’d done the same thing for a long time. It’s in admiration. A lot of my guys are with the Bulls. Marc Eversley is the G.M. There are a lot of people I’ve been close to. I look at it—I admire it in many ways.

Are there decisions you regret—moves you’ve made that, if you could go back, you would do differently?

All of us make mistakes. You’re going to have a draft pick and pick the wrong guy. What’s one decision that I’ve made? I’ve made a lot of bad decisions.

Do you have a follow-up process, in order to avoid repeating mistakes that you make?

I’m not going to tell you what we do differently. I will say we do things differently.

Tell me your secrets.

I’m not going to tell you our secrets. But in our town hall, when we were talking about our identity, when we chose the words, a lot of the words that came out were different. This league is a copycat league, and, honestly, we take pride in not being that. I don’t have to do what other teams are doing.

You have three star players, and then everyone wants to get three stars. You draft a foreign player, everyone wants to draft a foreigner.

We’re going to do things differently. I take pride in that.

What’s an example?

I can’t tell you.

Not many people expected you to draft Scottie Barnes. What did you see in him?

Just a talented, big player, fierce, a winner. It’s not like other guys don’t have that. There are many guys picked after him who are going to be incredibly successful. But this is the guy we gravitated toward, with the style of play we like. A playmaker, he’ll learn to shoot the basketball, he’s passionate, and his personality stands out in a way that we want for “We the North” fever.

You weigh that.

Everything you have to weigh. Everything comes into play.

There is something unique about this place, which is why I took the job here. Even when we’ve won the championship, it’s almost still unknown. It’s a gold mine. Because it’s outside the United States, I don’t think people recognize that as much. There are so many things that can expand the minds of players, partners, workers.

Are you talking about the culture of Toronto?

Yeah. It’s a mixture of Europe and America. Sometimes people see it as cold. New York is cold. Chicago is cold. It’s what you make it.

Is that a big factor in why you wanted to stay? There was a big story that broke recently about power struggles in the organization, with Edward Rogers not wanting to bring you back, and Larry Tanenbaum overruling him.

It’s how I feel about the culture of everything. My kids were born here. I have a connection there. In terms of the story that broke, when I know that it’s not right, I won’t be here. That’s all I’ll say.

You went through what seems like a horrifying experience, of being falsely accused of assaulting someone, and then having to be silent, for legal reasons, even though you knew that people were making false claims about you. I read that it was cathartic when you saw the video, and were able to confirm what actually happened. I imagine that a lot of people have that experience, particularly in the Black community, where there’s doubt cast on their own experiences.

Putting it into perspective, mine was nothing compared with people who have lost their lives. But to come back to your point: I watched “The Central Park Five,” and, when it hasn’t happened to you, you say to yourself, “Why don’t they just say what happened? Why don’t they tell us?” And, I swear to you, until it actually happens to you, you have no idea.

As a grown-ass man, I doubted myself. You doubt what happened. Because there’s this thing where it almost goes blank in your mind. When you have every reporter on a microphone reporting that I punched him in the jaw? And if this had never come out, this footage—you know what, I almost thank him for suing me. Because we had to get the footage, and the footage had to be public.

To be honest, it doesn’t bother me anymore. I’ve moved on in life. My concern now is how you help people. We know that this happens to the Black community consistently. It happens to certain communities. How do we help these people now?

To your question: yes, it was a very incredible moment, when I saw the video. I was on the bus going to watch the game against the Boston Celtics in the bubble. And, I swear, the first thing that came to my mind was, Is this really what happened? Every single person doubted me, outside my family.

Look, it’s in the past. Honestly, we moved on. But these cases: How do we help? How do we get more body cams? How is bail reformed, to make things better for underprivileged people? All those things we really have to examine as a society and community.

You’ve said that you feel a lot of responsibility and pressure, being African and having a high-level executive position. Is that still the case?

Yes. We’re beginning to see more and more. I’m so happy for Ime Udoka of the Boston Celtics, and so many assistant coaches now, like Patrick Mutombo has been. I’m proud of all the women, too, who are doing incredible work—as Africans, as Black women. And I say to myself, with pride, every day: “We’ve made money, we’ve had opportunity, but what opportunity are you creating for the next person?” I think I hate that title of “the first African G.M.”—that’s embarrassing to have that. Other people have to come along, because that means you’re helping people.

There’s been a lot of attention about growing the ranks of Black coaches, but less with regard to front-office positions. Is that something you specifically encourage?

In every single way—coaching, front office, administration—every way you look at it, Black people have to get more opportunity. We have to be intentional about it. There’s going to be a low percentage of the coaches who fail, but there’s a percentage of white coaches who fail.

Do you look for potential executives when you go to your camps or on your trips? I think people sometimes assume that African countries are a good source of players, but people aren’t talking about all the other jobs in basketball.

It’s something that we have started to pay attention to. As Giants of Africa continues to spread, we still teach life skills—honesty, and respect for women, and respect for your elders, and being on time, and shaking somebody’s hand and telling them who you are, what’s your name, where you’re from. And then we wanted to move even further, to teach the ecosystem of sports. And this is what we tell the kids: “You follow this path, and maybe you get a scholarship through the talents you have, and maybe you’re not good enough to be in the N.B.A., but you are good enough to be Louisa or Masai, or a basketball coach, or a sports educator, or a sports psychologist. You follow something through your niche, through the love of what you are doing.” I’m telling you, our eyes are wide open when we go to Nigeria—travelling with, I think, about seventeen people we have going on this. We are trying to find that next youth, that next person who has that thing which we feel like could be pretty special, or take them somewhere in their lives.