Masai Ujiri Interview on the Steam Room with Ernie and Chuck

[DelAbbot]

What's more hilarious is you and Del going at the FO for a year for not engaging in a rebuild sooner and are now saying actually, they did do a rebuild, it just failed. So which is it?

Also, pretty clear that he means 2 different things in these clips if you don't go into it with bias.

Masai did his first rebuild starting Feb 2021 in Tampa (when he traded Norm and sat Lowry) and he declared it finished Feb 2022 when he sold off draft asset to acquire Thad. He made a huge mistake in that rebuild and it failed and he realized it when FVV left in FA summer 2023.

Masai started his 2nd rebuild with the trade of OG for IQ and RJ and currently is still going on

He declared it finished with the young trade? Let's make up some more BS. As if there isn't enough here already.

The action of trading away draft asset is a declaration of rebuild finished. What rebuilding team had ever sold off draft position in the middle of its rebuild?

[WaltFrazier]

He's a great humanitarian for Africa. He's inspirational to some people in social issues. But purely as a basketball decision maker is Masai the guy to turn this team around?

[Basketball_Jones]

I'm 100% in favour of a total rebuild of the roster. That means not getting attached to mediocre low upside players especially at the expense of higher upside more risky options. Now, one could hold mediocre assets temporarily in order to trade at a later date, we'll see if he's willing to do that in this rebuild setting. Of course, there's a salary floor to consider.

Take advantage of teams desperate to win now. Dump players you don't see as foundation pieces before value drops a lot. With many picks incoming, you can be aggressive here.

Let’s hope Masai does that before he leaves. No confidence in new person doing the dirty work especially with new ownership probably looking to compete.

[adubmac]

Before we count on Masai to turn around Canada, let's see him make the Raptors respectable again.

[Naysorn]

Yeah it’s true I can’t recall Masai ever doing a rebuild. He probably won’t be around to see it through either.

he wanted to do a full rebuild when he tried to trade lowry to the knicks back in 2013. dolan vetoed it, we became one of the most successful sports franchises of the decade and then the rest was history.

with that said, we're in a good spot. i like some of the young talent we have. we just need one more scottie barnes, future all-nba level prospect this draft and then we can start building up to contendership.

[Naysorn]

I'm 100% in favour of a total rebuild of the roster. That means not getting attached to mediocre low upside players especially at the expense of higher upside more risky options. Now, one could hold mediocre assets temporarily in order to trade at a later date, we'll see if he's willing to do that in this rebuild setting. Of course, there's a salary floor to consider.

Take advantage of teams desperate to win now. Dump players you don't see as foundation pieces before value drops a lot. With many picks incoming, you can be aggressive here.

Let’s hope Masai does that before he leaves. No confidence in new person doing the dirty work especially with new ownership probably looking to compete.

bro we still got bobby webster and dan tolzman

we'll be fine

[Basketball_Jones]

I'm 100% in favour of a total rebuild of the roster. That means not getting attached to mediocre low upside players especially at the expense of higher upside more risky options. Now, one could hold mediocre assets temporarily in order to trade at a later date, we'll see if he's willing to do that in this rebuild setting. Of course, there's a salary floor to consider.

Take advantage of teams desperate to win now. Dump players you don't see as foundation pieces before value drops a lot. With many picks incoming, you can be aggressive here.

Let’s hope Masai does that before he leaves. No confidence in new person doing the dirty work especially with new ownership probably looking to compete.

bro we still got bobby webster and dan tolzman

we'll be fine

Ugh no confidence in Webster I firmly believe he was behind the Poeltl trade.

[TheGeneral99]

He's a great humanitarian for Africa. He's inspirational to some people in social issues. But purely as a basketball decision maker is Masai the guy to turn this team around?

On track record alone the team has been a really good in 8 out of 12 seasons with Masai.

Out of the remaining 4 seasons we have the following:

2021 - Post-Championship and COVID-19 season, ton of injuries, deliberate tank, got Scottie.
2023 - 41-41, underachieved team and made mid-season trades that can be critiqued.
2024 - Traded core, started rebuild and tanked
2025 - Tank year.

I think he deserves until the end of next year to see if the rebuild is moving in a positive direction. If not, maybe it's time to move in a different direction.

[Scase]

He's a great humanitarian for Africa. He's inspirational to some people in social issues. But purely as a basketball decision maker is Masai the guy to turn this team around?

On track record alone the team has been a really good in 8 out of 12 seasons with Masai.

Out of the remaining 4 seasons we have the following:

2021 - Post-Championship and COVID-19 season, ton of injuries, deliberate tank, got Scottie.
2023 - 41-41, underachieved team and made mid-season trades that can be critiqued.
2024 - Traded core, started rebuild and tanked
2025 - Tank year.

I think he deserves until the end of next year to see if the rebuild is moving in a positive direction. If not, maybe it's time to move in a different direction.

What to you would determine if it's moving in the right direction? Another high draft pick from a tanked 25-26 season, or more wins? There are naturally a ton of other "smaller" things that could determine that like trading Jak/RJ.

But I think the 2 major/obvious events would be, do we tank another year for a high pick (lotto odds in our favour or not is not relevant IMO), or do we try and start winning games next year.

[Raps in 4]

Kinda hilarious that you post this right after Del posts a clip of him after the Tampa season saying the same thing, and yet that was never a rebuild according to him.

I wonder why I wouldn't outright believe the words of someone who talks out of both sides of their mouth all the time.

It's also real easy for him to say AFTER the team is 8-29 (at the time of recording), you know, unless you think it was all part of his master plan for all these injuries.

What's more hilarious is you and Del going at the FO for a year for not engaging in a rebuild sooner and are now saying actually, they did do a rebuild, it just failed. So which is it?

Also, pretty clear that he means 2 different things in these clips if you don't go into it with bias.

Masai did his first rebuild starting Feb 2021 in Tampa (when he traded Norm and sat Lowry) and he declared it finished Feb 2022 when he sold off draft asset to acquire Thad. He made a huge mistake in that rebuild and it failed and he realized it when FVV left in FA summer 2023.

Masai started his 2nd rebuild with the trade of OG for IQ and RJ and currently is still going on

2021 wasn't a rebuild. He didn't want to pay Norm so he traded him for a younger player. Trading a role player does not signal a rebuild.

They tanked that season, but the intent was never to rebuild, or he would have traded pieces from the actual core.

This is absolutely the first year of Masai's rebuild, and it came 1-2 years too late.

[DelAbbot]

What's more hilarious is you and Del going at the FO for a year for not engaging in a rebuild sooner and are now saying actually, they did do a rebuild, it just failed. So which is it?

Also, pretty clear that he means 2 different things in these clips if you don't go into it with bias.

Masai did his first rebuild starting Feb 2021 in Tampa (when he traded Norm and sat Lowry) and he declared it finished Feb 2022 when he sold off draft asset to acquire Thad. He made a huge mistake in that rebuild and it failed and he realized it when FVV left in FA summer 2023.

Masai started his 2nd rebuild with the trade of OG for IQ and RJ and currently is still going on

2021 wasn't a rebuild. He didn't want to pay Norm so he traded him for a younger player. Trading a role player does not signal a rebuild.

They tanked that season, but the intent was never to rebuild, or he would have traded pieces from the actual core.

This is absolutely the first year of Masai's rebuild, and it came 1-2 years too late.

Why then didn't he want to pay Kyle Lowry after Tampa season? It was a rebuild and Masai said so in my first post in this thread

[Raps in 4]

Masai did his first rebuild starting Feb 2021 in Tampa (when he traded Norm and sat Lowry) and he declared it finished Feb 2022 when he sold off draft asset to acquire Thad. He made a huge mistake in that rebuild and it failed and he realized it when FVV left in FA summer 2023.

Masai started his 2nd rebuild with the trade of OG for IQ and RJ and currently is still going on

2021 wasn't a rebuild. He didn't want to pay Norm so he traded him for a younger player. Trading a role player does not signal a rebuild.

They tanked that season, but the intent was never to rebuild, or he would have traded pieces from the actual core.

This is absolutely the first year of Masai's rebuild, and it came 1-2 years too late.

Why then didn't he want to pay Kyle Lowry after Tampa season? It was a rebuild and Masai said so in my first post in this thread

Because Lowry was 34? Not re-signing a declining 34 year-old to a 3/85 contract does not signal a rebuild either. Pascal and FVV had already broken out. The intent was to continue building around them. A rebuild would have been trading Pascal and Fred then.

[Tacoma]

I would characterize the Thad trade, the norm trade and the Lowry trade as re-tooling, not rebuilding. We kept OG and Pascal - our two best assets.

It’s probably semantics, but this is definitely a rebuild as we are outright tanking.

It's short-term vs long-term rebuilding....you can say Masai tried the short-term rebuilding and it didn't work out, but you can't say Masai has done a long-term rebuild involving multiple years of top lottery draft picks.

Totally fair response, and what I was thinking/feeling as well.

From a taxonomy perspective, retooling is a subset of rebuilding thus it is rebuilding. The way I saw it, we have been rebuilding since Lowry left, trying to win led by FVV/Siakam, then that failed we reset to BBQ trying to win with them.

With each reset of the rebuild, to start each season, we were both developing & trying to win at same time, and then at the trade deadline, we either went full tank or targeted the playoffs. In 2023, with the Poeltl trade, we IMO wrongly tried for the playoffs.

So now with BBQ flailing, it looks like we're headed for another reset of this rebuild to Barnes and whomever we select in the 2025 draft. It's been a long process for Masai to get here and we are still in a situation of uncertainty regarding our core players.

[WiggOuts]

They talked about Masai being a top 2 GM in the NBA, and a future candidate for NBA Commissioner.

It almost brought a tear to my eyes, because we know he is eventually destined for greater glory.

We are so lucky.

I've been saying it for years, he will be the commissioner some day and he will be the best thing ever for the NBA. No offense, but the commissioner needs to be someone who is not American so they can turn this thing into something catered to the whole world rather than 1 country

[Quattro]

He's a great humanitarian for Africa. He's inspirational to some people in social issues. But purely as a basketball decision maker is Masai the guy to turn this team around?

We watched him do it before so I'm gonna go with yes.

[GP2]

Ah man, I thought they'd be chopping it up in a sauna. Though not sure if we want that visual of Barkley.

[Merit]

It's short-term vs long-term rebuilding....you can say Masai tried the short-term rebuilding and it didn't work out, but you can't say Masai has done a long-term rebuild involving multiple years of top lottery draft picks.

Totally fair response, and what I was thinking/feeling as well.

From a taxonomy perspective, retooling is a subset of rebuilding thus it is rebuilding. The way I saw it, we have been rebuilding since Lowry left, trying to win led by FVV/Siakam, then that failed we reset to BBQ trying to win with them.

With each reset of the rebuild, to start each season, we were both developing & trying to win at same time, and then at the trade deadline, we either went full tank or targeted the playoffs. In 2023, with the Poeltl trade, we IMO wrongly tried for the playoffs.

So now with BBQ flailing, it looks like we're headed for another reset of this rebuild to Barnes and whomever we select in the 2025 draft. It's been a long process for Masai to get here and we are still in a situation of uncertainty regarding our core players.

You’re allowed to view it however you like, and are free to disagree with Masai or say he’s lying. You might be right.

In my opinion, Masai didn’t want to tank in Tampa. He was forced into it. He gets a pass because of Covid and because we got Scottie.

He then attempted to re-tool and would’ve kept Scottie in the lineup but Fred left causing us to have zero shooting and to pivot to Dennis. We had the entire MLE to spend on whoever we wanted, but were forced to spend that on Dennis instead of having a different asset and Fred.

When Scottie and Pascal didn’t develop their shooting enough and it turned out that they can’t play together if we want a championship, he pivoted again to a full rebuild. That started after we traded both Pascal and OG.

Last offseason was the first of the rebuild. Unfortunately we didn’t keep our pick, but fortunately we have ours this coming offseason. If Masai was in win-now mode, we would’ve made different moves.