Breaking: Rogers Aquires Bell Stake In MLSE

[ATLTimekeeper]

That's a good bet, especially if Lieweke is involved with one of the projects

I think he’ll go with Larry and his son and buy themselves a bigger soccer team.

They got one.

They purchased Saint-Étienne, a top division club in France this past spring.

https://www.kilmergroup.com/kilmer-sports-ventures-acquires-french-professional-football-club-as-saint-etienne/

From the ESPN Paul Kagame article it seems like Masai is setting himself up to run an MLSE type company in Africa. I guess if the Raptor season goes well he and Ed will get along just fine, but if there's a lot of Ls racking up I think there will be some nonsense this year.

[ForeverTFC]

Masai also got a % of franchise market value appreciation (amount is unknown). Something that any board would hesitate on.

Show me a Sr. Executive of a multi-billion dollar company without RSUs/options vesting and I'll show you a fool.

Stop opining on things you have no clue about.

Most sports execs don't get that in their compensation. It was a nice reward for the championship.

Sure. That's not what you said. That major execs don't get a stake in the franchise is not the norm in the world of high powered executives, it's the exception.

[OakleyDokely]

Show me a Sr. Executive of a multi-billion dollar company without RSUs/options vesting and I'll show you a fool.

Stop opining on things you have no clue about.

Most sports execs don't get that in their compensation. It was a nice reward for the championship.

Sure. That's not what you said. That major execs don't get a stake in the franchise is not the norm in the world of high powered executives, it's the exception.

Masai has the titles of President and vice-chairman so he's more than just a normal run of the mill sports exec in the current structure.

[Basketball_Jones]

I really like Masai. I like his philosophies. I like his interpersonal approach. I like his belief, though sometimes that is to a fault. It’d be sad to see him go. But long time GM’s/VP’s are rare I think. People come and go, so this was always inevitable. We’ll see what position this team is in once he leaves but hopefully leaves us with some good assets for the next person to make some moves with. I would also hope Bobby goes to be honest. I blame a lot of the past few seasons on him.

[SHFT]

Absolutely awful. Masai is gone. Raptors will be run exactly like the Blue Jays, which is so disappointing. Welcome back to the teachers pension fund years where a little profit is all that matters.

people say this, but its not like rogers has cheaped out on blue jays to my knowledge. bad decisions maybe, but not cheap.

Smart spending > esp in a cap world.

Sent from my SM-G991W using RealGM mobile app

[Reeko]

The only reason the Bulls have gone the way they have is bad luck with injuries. Lonzo's career ending injury and Zach Lavine's career altering injury are the two big ones, if those don't happen they would have been a decent team the last few seasons, certainly better than the Raptors.

I actually like what the Bulls are doing now, they are committed to rebuilding, sold off veterans, drafted Buzelis, Giddey is a reasonable pickup for an expiring player. The only veterans they haven't gotten rid of are the ones no one wants, Lavine and Vucevic, they would trade those guys if there were any takers. They'll be terrible this year anyway and likely wind up with top picks over the next few seasons while our team pushes for the play-in, at least they've picked a direction, our front office is desperately trying to scrape into the playoffs and get crushed in the first round by the championship Celitcs.

Lonzo and Lavine have a pretty lengthy injury history but sure chalk it up to bad luck.

Lonzo Ball didn't have a history of injury when the Bulls traded for him, he was actually coming off the best season of his career to that point, his contract was very reasonable given his production, the career ending injury was impossible to predict.

Zach Lavine you can argue did have an injury history, but realistically most teams aren't going to bail on a 25 year old All-Star coming off a 27/5/5 42% 3pt season, that player gets a max contract extension every time. The whole idea that they are where they are because their front office is so much worse than ours is just not true.

Don't forget the horribly short sighted Vuc trade that any poster on RealGM would have told you was a terrible decision in an attempt to compete.

[ItsDanger]

Show me a Sr. Executive of a multi-billion dollar company without RSUs/options vesting and I'll show you a fool.

Stop opining on things you have no clue about.

Most sports execs don't get that in their compensation. It was a nice reward for the championship.

Sure. That's not what you said. That major execs don't get a stake in the franchise is not the norm in the world of high powered executives, it's the exception.

I stated they would hesitate on that part, it can be quite significant depending on what he negotiated.

[Boardbreaker]

The only reason the Bulls have gone the way they have is bad luck with injuries. Lonzo's career ending injury and Zach Lavine's career altering injury are the two big ones, if those don't happen they would have been a decent team the last few seasons, certainly better than the Raptors.

I actually like what the Bulls are doing now, they are committed to rebuilding, sold off veterans, drafted Buzelis, Giddey is a reasonable pickup for an expiring player. The only veterans they haven't gotten rid of are the ones no one wants, Lavine and Vucevic, they would trade those guys if there were any takers. They'll be terrible this year anyway and likely wind up with top picks over the next few seasons while our team pushes for the play-in, at least they've picked a direction, our front office is desperately trying to scrape into the playoffs and get crushed in the first round by the championship Celitcs.

Lonzo and Lavine have a pretty lengthy injury history but sure chalk it up to bad luck.

Lonzo Ball didn't have a history of injury when the Bulls traded for him, he was actually coming off the best season of his career to that point, his contract was very reasonable given his production, the career ending injury was impossible to predict.

Zach Lavine you can argue did have an injury history, but realistically most teams aren't going to bail on a 25 year old All-Star coming off a 27/5/5 42% 3pt season, that player gets a max contract extension every time. The whole idea that they are where they are because their front office is so much worse than ours is just not true.

So the guy that tore that exact same knee as a Laker and hasn't come close to playing a full 82 games in his career has no injury history?

[causal_fan]

My expectations is that Masai Ujiri will start working on an exit strategy - Wonder which NBA team might be looking for a new leader.

[ForeverTFC]

Lonzo and Lavine have a pretty lengthy injury history but sure chalk it up to bad luck.

Lonzo Ball didn't have a history of injury when the Bulls traded for him, he was actually coming off the best season of his career to that point, his contract was very reasonable given his production, the career ending injury was impossible to predict.

Zach Lavine you can argue did have an injury history, but realistically most teams aren't going to bail on a 25 year old All-Star coming off a 27/5/5 42% 3pt season, that player gets a max contract extension every time. The whole idea that they are where they are because their front office is so much worse than ours is just not true.

So the guy that tore that exact same knee as a Laker and hasn't come close to playing a full 82 games in his career has no injury history?

Most have now caught on to why the Pelicans were so eager to move on from Lonzo; the injury concerns seem to have been there for a long time. Forget what pod it was on, but one of the ESPN guys said recently: "you think the Pels knew something before the rest of us? Looking a lot like it."

[Raps in 4]

I think he’ll go with Larry and his son and buy themselves a bigger soccer team.

They got one.

They purchased Saint-Étienne, a top division club in France this past spring.

https://www.kilmergroup.com/kilmer-sports-ventures-acquires-french-professional-football-club-as-saint-etienne/

From the ESPN Paul Kagame article it seems like Masai is setting himself up to run an MLSE type company in Africa. I guess if the Raptor season goes well he and Ed will get along just fine, but if there's a lot of Ls racking up I think there will be some nonsense this year.

Ed doesn't care how the team does. He just wants yes-men working under him.

[Raps in 4]

My expectations is that Masai Ujiri will start working on an exit strategy - Wonder which NBA team might be looking for a new leader.

If I'm Denver, I throw everything at him.

[WuTang_CMB]

Financing for this transaction will not affect Rogers debt leverage and financing will include private investors.

[C_Money]

Of course there’s a random debate about the Chicago Bulls happening in this thread for some reason.

[Michael Jordan]

Lets see if they decide to spend money on payroll

[ForeverTFC]

My expectations is that Masai Ujiri will start working on an exit strategy - Wonder which NBA team might be looking for a new leader.

If I'm Denver, I throw everything at him.

Korenke is way too cheap. I doubt he goes to any of the existing teams in the league tbh.

If he doesn't stay with Larry and Kilmer, I think he might join LBJ and his ownership group and get the expansion team in Vegas. Rich Paul and Masai seem to have a relationship.

[Scase]

ya, people don't realize just how bad it was pre Masai.

They sucked for most their history, but they didn't suck enough to get top picks (other than for the Bargnani year which took a lot of lottery luck), and they were generally unwatchable other than for a couple VC years. The best part of most seasons were the meme's posted on this board.

That's not to say Masai has been great lately or that he shouldn't be replaced, but a mediocre Masai is 5x better than what we had prior.

We havent been much better post chip though. It's been a constant decline that resulted in 2 of the 5 worst post expansion era seasons in franchise history. And while I won't throw too much **** at him for the covid season, you gotta accept the whole body of work. People can say how we won 48 games post chip, but without the context of what that team actually was, and what they would have resulted in it's meaningless. Instead of tearing it down, we tried to win with a flawed core and have gotten progressively worse, and we're right back at BC/Babcock era win rates.

Ultimately I'm of the mindset that it can't get much worse than it currently is, I've seen the worst and the best of this team, so I'm prepared for the future of it.

It depends on who they are replaced with because there are a lot options much worse than a Masai/Webster duo.

You can be bad record wise and also take Giddey or Suggs instead of Barnes. That's how it gets worse and that's what happened a lot pre Masai.

Well yeah, but that's not specific to Ed Rogers taking over. Being bad record wise, and picking Giddey or Suggs at least keeps you in the bad to try again next time. But getting a fantastic centre piece, and still building out a middling treadmill-esque team isn't exactly difficult. We've seen it plenty of times before both in Toronto and elsewhere, hell, we're seeing it right now.

Yes you can do worse than Masai/Bobby, but you can also do much better than the spot we've been in for years. "It could always be worse" is a defeatist attitude of which I'm not a big fan.

Keep in mind it's quite possible we could be going into the Bulls direction as a franchise as an MO.

It's been very disappointing the last few years, but it could get much worse.

Eh could it though? IMO the worst place for a team is being stuck in the middle, not being a 20 win team, but exactly where we are now. Obviously that's subjective, but for me, this is the bottom of the barrel. At least with really low win teams you have the promise of high draft picks and getting lucky with some breakout prospect.

In the middle you have picks that rarely ever amount to anything substantial, and just sniff the playoffs while never being a real threat. One has a chance to break out, the other doesn't, it's designed to hit the bare minimum bar of "competitive" for people to keep buying.

I don't want to turn this into a tanking thread, so I'll just say, from my perspective, we're in the worst position possible currently and I can't see it getting much worse.

I'm going to remind you that Masai drafted Barnes. Masai has a lot to blame for the last couple of years, but it's one thing to have a middling franchise, it's quite another to have a middling franchise with actual no young blue chip prospect to potentially build around.

We could be stuck in the same situation but have Suggs instead of Barnes (and Suggs is a great role player, but not a building block).

That Barnes pick is why I still hold Masai in high regard, despite the last few years, he went away from the hype of Suggs.

Now you say we are like the Bulls well who exactly who are the Bulls building around? Josh Giddey? Coby White?

Ok and? What you do with it is what matters. The Cavs drafted lebron, and then they put horrendous teams around him, should they be applauded?

We drafted Barnes, and have proceeded to build a middling team. I have faith in Masai's drafting acumen, I don't think I have ever spoken ill of that, he's great at it. But there is much more to a team than drafting. Building a middling team with a blue chip or without one, you still have a middling team. Results are what matter.

Also I think you might be a bit confused, I didn't say we are like the bulls, you were the one who brought the bulls up

[anotherhomer]

My expectations is that Masai Ujiri will start working on an exit strategy - Wonder which NBA team might be looking for a new leader.

If I'm Denver, I throw everything at him.

Korenke is way too cheap. I doubt he goes to any of the existing teams in the league tbh.

If he doesn't stay with Larry and Kilmer, I think he might join LBJ and his ownership group and get the expansion team in Vegas. Rich Paul and Masai seem to have a relationship.

ya i think it's widely expected ujiri will leave toronto in the next year or two, i accepted that

[Raps in 4]

Who do you guys think will be replacing Masai? Who is the Mark Shapiro of the NBA? Someone with decades of experience running another franchise into the ground.

[redeye514]

Lets see if they decide to spend money on payroll

Me too, but all major nations control their own Telco, for good reason. They are all state run Oligopolies, and can charge whatever.