Deep Dive into Masai's Presidency

[MixxSRC]

5 pages of rambling and no mention of which GM/Exec would be better than Masai

Riley, Buford, West, Myers, Ainge, Presti

I think Masai is somewhere in the Morey range.

Those other guys have won multiple titles, been sustained contenders, and have assets galore.

Buford now finally is in the rebuild so his time to fall has come after 2 decades of greatness.

Presti didn't win a title but he built a sustained contender and made a mistake with Harden and then KD left, but even now he's reset and they have assets galore.

Masai's one season cannot ignore everything around it. Lebronto did happen or were we not a laughing stock just two years ago?

Buford? Guy who traded Kawhi for Derozan and.......Jacob Poeltl? Cool story. and 2 decades of greatness coincidentally alight with....Tim Duncan...damn what a coincidence.

Presti didn't win....you forgot to mention he had 3 MVP on a team and didn't win

[MixxSRC]

Spurs have been making playoffs for 22 years in a row and won 5 championships but that's 17 times they lost in playoffs. Raptors have been making playoffs for 7 in a row and people are ready to pull a plug lmaoooooo

[ruckus]

5 pages of rambling and no mention of which GM/Exec would be better than Masai

Riley, Buford, West, Myers, Ainge, Presti

I think Masai is somewhere in the Morey range.

Those other guys have won multiple titles, been sustained contenders, and have assets galore.

Buford now finally is in the rebuild so his time to fall has come after 2 decades of greatness.

Presti didn't win a title but he built a sustained contender and made a mistake with Harden and then KD left, but even now he's reset and they have assets galore.

Masai's one season cannot ignore everything around it. Lebronto did happen or were we not a laughing stock just two years ago?

All those guys have had the pleasure of drafting all-time great players. (Edit: except for Ainge) Masai has had 1 lotto pick since hes been here and he was able to flip it for the guy that helped us win the title.

Actually, this makes the success that the Raptors have had over the past 7-ish years even more remarkable considering what Masai had to work with coming in.

[omar36]

5 pages of rambling and no mention of which GM/Exec would be better than Masai

Riley, Buford, West, Myers, Ainge, Presti

I think Masai is somewhere in the Morey range.

Those other guys have won multiple titles, been sustained contenders, and have assets galore.

Buford now finally is in the rebuild so his time to fall has come after 2 decades of greatness.

Presti didn't win a title but he built a sustained contender and made a mistake with Harden and then KD left, but even now he's reset and they have assets galore.

Masai's one season cannot ignore everything around it. Lebronto did happen or were we not a laughing stock just two years ago?

Buford? Guy who traded Kawhi for Derozan and.......Jacob Poeltl? Cool story. and 2 decades of greatness coincidentally alight with....Tim Duncan...damn what a coincidence.

Presti didn't win....you forgot to mention he had 3 MVP on a team and didn't win

yup, my man had 3 mvp plus a all defensive guy in ibaka, all in their primes and nothing lmao. now he had to blow it up.

heat fans were calling riley senile like a year ago, ppl i guess forgot the atrocious contracts he handed james johnson and dion waiters and olynk lol

all gms have bad moments, masai is easily top 5 and i feel most fans would agree. this is a tough situation tho, but i trust our team

[Chandan]

he's a bit lucky, a bit overrated in terms of team building. But GMs are in the people business and there are like a million moving parts each with a mind of their own. They can only do so much unless they are in LA. Masai had seized the opportunity and brought the raptors to the promised land so that makes him automatically one of the best.

[Reeko]

5 pages of rambling and no mention of which GM/Exec would be better than Masai

Riley, Buford, West, Myers, Ainge, Presti

I think Masai is somewhere in the Morey range.

Those other guys have won multiple titles, been sustained contenders, and have assets galore.

Buford now finally is in the rebuild so his time to fall has come after 2 decades of greatness.

Presti didn't win a title but he built a sustained contender and made a mistake with Harden and then KD left, but even now he's reset and they have assets galore.

Masai's one season cannot ignore everything around it. Lebronto did happen or were we not a laughing stock just two years ago?

Where to begin with this post. You say that Masai fluked his way into getting Kawhi, yet you list Buford as superior despite him actually fluking his way to Tim Duncan because Robinson got injured that season and they lucked into the #1 pick. Buford is a great GM and was able to surround Duncan with excellent players and coaching staff. But the fact remains that he drafted the consensus #1 pick and 4 year college player onto a team that needed an alpha dog to get them over the hump.

Jerry West won many titles as the GM of the Lakers, who acquire more star free agents in any given decade than most teams see in their entire existence. He is without a doubt one of the greatest basketball executives ever, but he has also had the advantage of working in the most glamorous, influential and well recognized basketball organization in the world. With that being said, what happened when he became the GM of a franchise that was not a major free agent destination, a franchise that was in a moribund state? Well he created a perennial playoff team in Memphis, that never won a championship. I'll leave it to you to decide which of the two situations he worked in mirrored Masai and the Raptors more.

All of the executives you listed are excellent, but to say that they are all above Masai is a bit ridiculous.

[SharoneWright]

Don't forget Stanley Johnson!

[Westside Gunn]

Lebron is Lebron, I wouldnt use Lebronto against Masai. The dude is the goat of our era.

Not even a talent like Harden and Westbrick combined could take on Lebron. Of course theres a lot more to it, but Lebron is in this league to make it to the finals or nothing less. The MJ jock sniffers wont leave him alone.

You can criticize Masai for finding terrible Lebron stoppers though, like PJ tucker and demarre carroll. Just garbage. Man dodged a bullet when Tucker went to Houston. If Kawhi cant stop him then we should never have the Lebronto discussion again. It just means the man is just unstoppable

[Raps in 4]

I used to think he was a fraud while he trotted out BC's team (Demar, Kyle, JV, Casey) for years. But when he finally started to put his own stamp on the team, I realized how great he is at his job. The dude has an incredible eye for talent.

[Chandan]

I used to think he was a fraud while he trotted out BC's team (Demar, Kyle, JV, Casey) for years. But when he finally started to put his own stamp on the team, I realized how great he is at his job. The dude has an incredible eye for talent.

imagine what he could do with a real lottery pick. the highest pick he've gotten is 9th and it was a solid big in Poetl. I really want to see what kind of players he could land us with a top 5 pick.

[Lego Legs]

I just came here to say OP is definitely Colangelo. Or his wife. One of the two...

[Clay Davis]

How can you tangibly prove that.

And again, this thought that it is a championship or bust paradigm needs to end, it's a contender for years to come paradigm.

We had one title and that team now is not a contender. 50 win seasons happened for the Hawks for the same amount of time as us, but a Kawhi trade didn't come to save their running the tires ECSF/ECF runs.

They weren't a contender and neither are we other than the one Kawhi year

People need to stop making up narratives lol. It's about building a consistent contender and for years he ran with Demar/Kyle/Casey that wasn't it and lucked into Kawhi. The entire picture needs to be seen.

How can I tangibly prove it?



Average franchise growth would be better, but this is a decent proxy. Pushing for the championship was good for the value of the franchise.

Hawks were successful too. What's wrong with saying the Hawks were well-managed in that time?

That's not tangibly proving anything. All the teams values have increased about the same. Since 2010 the value of an NBA team has increased by 575.5%. That's every NBA team.

And with regard to it being a feat, again, he has done well as a business man, sure, but this he is devoid of criticism for the on court product needs to end. He has yet to build a consistent contender, he had a one off year and built a team that is a round 2-3 team at best that is likely worse than that now without Kyle.

No one has an answer for prior to Kawhi, on thin ice, after Kawhi, great GM. This is a fact.

Not every team has increased that much. The Suns, for instance, didn't.

Sent from my SM-A520W using RealGM mobile app

[GordanFreeman]

The same people wouldn't care about that winning percentage prior to the 1 off year that Kawhi won the title.

We have in all those years of winning had one contender year.

Masai has yet to build a consistent contender and that is a fact.

Again, good GM, but this godlike figure of him needs to be removed.

How many elite GMs are there? Name them? And don't say your husband, Mr. Colon-jello! He was the worst.

Really? Is this what we’ve come to?

Sorry, I apologize for getting you mixed up with your mother, Mattia. Now go on and let us know who the top 5 GMs are in your opinion.

[team edward]

What has Masai really done, anyway? If you take away:
- drastically increased value of the brand domestically and internationally
- consistently increasing sales and revenue, including consistent and improving playoff revenues
- completely rehabbing the image of the franchise within the league
- leading a new culture of basketball within Canada
- outperforming “that other MLSE team” consistently
- being a leader on “social issues” and by extension lending that value to MLSE
- clearly recognized as one of if not the top NBA GM
- oh yeah, the first major pro sports title in Toronto since 1993

But sure, prepare your presentation on your personal Monday morning quarterback opinions of his specific basketball decisions, and feel free to present it to the MLSE board along with your proposal for a better option.

I’d like to see how that goes.

[aminiaturebuddha]

Ok, so OP's thing basically seems to break down into 3 main complaints:

1) DeMarre Carroll - which, ok, fine, I'll grant you that one. Still, it wasn't crippling by any means, and was perfectly reasonable to believe that we needed help on the wings, had cap space that wasn't going to be used on other bigger name free agents before the Raps became a respected organization.

2) Masai waited too long with the "mediocre" core of Lowry and DeRozan. But what is the alternative? Blow it up? Go back to square one? You can't just assume you'll be able to trade pieces for better ones. Except that Masai managed his assets and did precisely that when he ended up using DeMar and Poetl to get Kahwi. This is exactly what a GM needs to be able to do. It's very difficult to acquire superstar talent. You need to be able to put yourself in a position to do so when it's possible. Which is exactly what Masai did. At the same time, the Raptors were consistently near the top of the Eastern Conference. So this wasn't a "mediocre" team. It was a very good one, biding it's time until the right factors existed to become an excellent one.

3) Despite all of the success of those years, the Raptors weren't a "consistent contender" and the OP needs the team to meet that criteria for Masai to be considered a good GM. The Raptors have had more wins in both the regular season and more playoff series wins than any team other than the Warriors over the past 5 years. Who, in OP's mind, actually has been a "consistent contender" over the last 7 years of Masai's presidency, other than the Warriors? You can't set an impossible bar and then criticize someone for not meeting it, or else that criticism becomes meaningless.

Sorry Steelo. Take the L on this one.

[Lateral Quicks]

Even highly successful executives have failures. When you've been a top exec in the league for as long as Masai, there are bound to be a number of blunders on the resume.

Ultimately he's presided over a team that has been a middle to high playoff team each year. That's really hard to do in the NBA. Masai believes in winning, playoff basketball, and so do I. Ownership would be dumb not to sign him to a huge extension. I want no part of a rebuild - as a lifelong Raptor fan, I know what losing looks like all too well, and want no part of it.

[HeadtopChunes]

i gotta say i hate the "treadmill" discourse, seems pretty dumb to me

[Ramed Nazored]

Like how you referenced your assertion that Fred/Pascal would struggle against Boston at the beginning of your post. As if that's someway reflective of special insight or clairvoyance, or proof that we should take you seriously. Everyone knew they would struggle against their length. That wasn't a bold prediction.

Anyways, I'm a simple man. I see a Steelo Green thread, my brain sends me this message :

[tecumseh18]

5 pages of rambling and no mention of which GM/Exec would be better than Masai

Riley, Buford, West, Myers, Ainge, Presti

I think Masai is somewhere in the Morey range.

.....

Presti didn't win a title but he built a sustained contender and made a mistake with Harden and then KD left, but even now he's reset and they have assets galore.

Presti didn't win....you forgot to mention he had 3 MVP on a team and didn't win

But any time you can sign Steven Adams to a 4 year / $100,000,000 contract, you have to do it.

Fun fact, Adams was drafted with the Raptors pick (BC traded it for Lowry). If Raptors had kept it, who would Masai have drafted? Hint, it wouldn't have been Steven f'n Adams. So ... Presti or Masai? We report, you decide.

[tecumseh18]

I used to think he was a fraud while he trotted out BC's team (Demar, Kyle, JV, Casey) for years. But when he finally started to put his own stamp on the team, I realized how great he is at his job. The dude has an incredible eye for talent.

imagine what he could do with a real lottery pick. the highest pick he've gotten is 9th and it was a solid big in Poetl. I really want to see what kind of players he could land us with a top 5 pick.

Yes, one lottery pick in all his time here. And how did he acquire that lottery pick (since we were always in the playoffs?