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After weeks of negotiations that began in mid-July, both MLSE chair Tanenbaum and Bell were on board with offering Ujiri a sweetened package that included incentive pay tied to a future increase in value of the Raptors — he had already added $500 million in value to the franchise since his arrival in 2013, taken the team to the playoffs in every year prior to the pandemic and won the NBA championship in 2019.
Other sports franchises from around the world were chasing Ujiri, according to an NBA source. One NBA team’s offer included a three-per-cent ownership stake along with a salary that eclipsed the $15 million per year deal he ultimately struck with MLSE. Teams in the English Premier League — soccer’s top domestic league — also made entreaties to Ujiri, an NBA Executive of the Year winner.
Tanenbaum and Bell were ready to lock Ujiri down, but, according to two sources close to the MLSE board, Edward Rogers was the holdout.
He told his partners he felt the compensation was too high, and, according to the MLSE sources and a source close to the NBA, Rogers was convinced the Raptors could be managed without Ujiri’s help by existing general manager Bobby Webster.
The increasingly tense situation came to a head during a late July meeting at Rogers’s Lake Rosseau cottage that cemented the executive’s antagonism toward the Raptors president.
Ujiri left the meeting feeling positive but Rogers told Tanenbaum it was one of the worst meetings he had ever had, according to MLSE sources. Rogers said the Raptors president was arrogant, according to sources, arriving with bodyguards, and that he failed to share his vision for the team.
The NBA source said Ujiri was caught off guard by that interpretation of the meeting, which he said had been amicable. The source also disputed that Ujiri brought bodyguards, saying the Raptors head had gone to Muskoka with his long-time driver so he could work in the car during the drive, as well as the videographer for a charitable project, who was tagging along as they were heading back to the airport after.
The sources said some time after the meeting, Rogers called Ujiri and told him he wasn’t worth the money he was being paid. The NBA source said the call left Ujiri feeling so angry and disrespected by Rogers that he considered taking a year off as president of the Raptors.
Others in the Maple Leaf Sports executive ranks went into damage-control mode, the two sources close to MLSE said, prompting a round of further calls to Ujiri to reassure him he would be protected from Rogers and urging him to ignore the comments.
Ujiri’s relationship with key MLSE board members, notably Tanenbaum, Dale Lastman and Bell CEO Mirko Bibic, ultimately made him feel comfortable enough to return to the Raptors as the team’s vice-chairman and president, the NBA source said.
Meanwhile, Rogers had been holding out on agreeing to the contract and said he would only back down if 12 conditions were met. Eleven of the conditions concerned contractual issues such as the terms of incentive-based pay, but the 12th had nothing to do with Ujiri’s compensation.
The MLSE sources said Rogers wanted Bell and Tanenbaum to agree to a complex and potentially contentious plan that would see Rogers Communications take its 37.5-per-cent stake in MLSE (which owns the Raptors, Toronto Maple Leafs, Argos, Toronto FC and other teams), and combine it with the Toronto Blue Jays to create a separate company.
Bell and Tanenbaum would not agree to Edward Rogers’s demands, which would have involved signing off on a complex set of team valuations and issues around control and broadcast rights.
But they still had a way out. Tanenbaum is governor of the Raptors, a position that gives him ultimate power to make a call on personnel issues at the team, a structure designed by the NBA to avoid stalemates between noncontrolling owners of teams. The sources said Tanenbaum preferred to reach compromises with his partners, but in this case, he decided to overrule Rogers and sign Ujiri.
Rogers was furious, the sources said, and he and Staffieri tried to plead their case with NBA commissioner Adam Silver and the league’s general counsel Rick Buchanan. The two NBA officials told Rogers that Tanenbaum had the right to make a call on the contract, according to the sources.
