Basketball fans in Canada are still rejoicing over the Toronto Raptors’ spectacular Game 6 win against the Golden State Warriors which clinched the team a 2019 National Basketball Association championship.
It was Canada’s first NBA championship. On the heels of the June 13 win, news channels around the world have been broadcasting that the Washington Wizards pro basketball team based in Washington, D.C. are eager to talk to Masai Ujiri, the general manager and president of basketball operations of the Raptors.
Since the Raptors’ win, Ujiri has become a global icon whose shrewd business acumen and talent for recruiting impressive players have thrust him into the international spotlight.
An English-born 49-year-old of Kenyan and Nigerian origin, Ujiri is the first African team president in the NBA. He has served as the Raptors president since 2013 and has emerged as a hot commodity in the sports world since navigating the team’s legendary win.
Here are 10 things to know about Masai Ujiri, architect of Raptors basketball operations.
Various news outlets have detailed proposed offers the Washington Wizards put on the table to woo the Toronto Raptors president: close to $10 million annually for six years for $60 million. A percentage of ownership and control is possible over other properties owned by Wizards parent Monumental Sports & Entertainment properties, one of the largest integrated sports and entertainment companies in the U.S.
The Washington Post reported on the Wizards’ link to Ujiri and that “a potential offer would have to include a pathway to an ownership stake.”
Lawrence Tanenbaum, the chairman of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, which oversees both the Toronto Raptors and the National Hockey League franchise among others, speculated on the proposed offer.
“I know Masai. He’s . . . like my son. There is no chance he’s leaving Toronto,” Tanenbaum said, according to Rogers Sportsnet’s Michael Grange. “I think if you ask Masai, he’s got everything he wants in Toronto.”
Although it has been leaked that Ujiri is “intrigued” by the offer, Ujiri is apparently comfortable leading his team to victories on Canadian soil. And why not? The Raptors are worth more at $1.675 billion, according to Forbes magazine. Ujiri has helped to build the Toronto Raptors into an elite team with excited fans filling the stands at each game and revenue for the franchise doubling.
“I love it here (in Toronto), Ujiri told Global News. “My family loves it here. My wife loves it here, which is very important. My kids are Canadians. You want to win more… In my mind, I’m here.”
Ujiri helped lead the Toronto Raptors to victory on June 13. The Raptors defeated the Golden State Warriors 114-110 to clinch the NBA title, claiming Canada’s first championship in a major American sports league in 24 years.
The victory comes on the heels of Ujiri’s orchestration of one of the most successful trades in NBA history.
In what many considered to be a controversial move, Ujiri recruited Kawhi Leonard from the San Antonio Spurs to Toronto and traded long-time Toronto player and town favorite DeMar DeRozan to the Spurs.
According to critics, this led to the Raptors winning their first NBA championship bringing the Larry O’Brien trophy for Canada for the first time ever.
It was a momentous night. As the stadium cheered, Ujiri proudly joined his teammates on the floor of the Oracle Arena in Oakland, California to celebrate their hard-won victory.
The Kenyan-Nigerian proudly showed off his African roots by draping a green and white Nigerian flag over his shoulders to celebrate after the Raptors clinched the title.
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“We’ve been growing and trying to prove to the world as a means of having an NBA team outside of the U.S. and all the guys—these players have been unbelievable,” Ujiri told a reporter. “To our coaches, to our ownership and much respect to the Golden State Warriors and to Kevin Durant and Clay Thompson, we love you as NBA players. We wanted to win in Toronto and we won in Toronto!”
On one of the proudest nights of his career, Ujiri was allegedly embroiled in an incident with a sheriff’s deputy following the Raptors and the Golden State Warriors game.
Ujiri tried to walk onto the court to celebrate the team’s win. A deputy stopped him, saying he didn’t have the right credentials. A pushing match ensued and according to police Masai hit the deputy with “a push that went upward and struck him (the deputy) in the face.” There was a partial video of the incident posted by NBC sports.
The deputy claimed to have suffered a concussion from the incident. The sheriff’s office declined to release full video of the incident.
A Warriors season-ticket holder witnessed the encounter between Ujiri and the sheriff’s deputy at Oracle Arena, and said that Ujiri did not strike the deputy.
Greg Wiener, 61, told the Associated Press that he stood next to the deputy at the end of Game 6 of the NBA Finals. The deputy first “put his hand on Ujiri’s chest and pushed him,” Weiner said. “Ujiri shoved him back before bystanders intervened.”
“The thing about the cops saying the policeman asked for his credentials, that didn’t happen,” Wiener said. “There was no conversation at all. This part about striking him in the face, yeah that didn’t happen.”n investigation There is an investigation.
Masai Ujiri was born on July 7, 1970 in Bournemouth, England and raised in Zaria, Nigeria. His Nigerian father was a hospital administrator and nursing educator while his mother, a doctor, is a Kenyan.
Ujiri rarely focused on basketball growing up because soccer was the national pastime in Africa. But at 13, he and his friends started shooting the hoop on their way to play soccer. Ujiri started spending more time on the basketball court and less time on the field. This interest would be fed by American sports magazines and VHS tapes of NBA games or basketball movies.
He admired Hakeem Olajuwon, an NBA star who was also Nigerian.
Before accepting the offer to become a general manager in 2013, Masai thought long and hard about accepting a job with the Raptors. During 10 of the previous 11 seasons before Ujiri joined the franchise, the Raptors had a win-loss success rate that was sub .500.
But Ujiri saw something in the club, the team, and the city of Toronto.
“When I looked at Toronto … I could see the potential of what a good team could look like there,” he told Business Insider. “Whether that was the fan base, the following, the coverage, the people, the ownership, the city — it’s beautiful and has diversity.
“The potential was huge, it ticked every single box, but the only thing we didn’t have was winning. So how do you build that brand? How do you win?”
Ujiri, who is considered one of the shrewdest front-office minds in the business of basketball and known for fearless, forward-thinking moves and blockbuster trades, had the answer.
“You come in with a vision of how to start again,” he said. “Of bringing in players and bringing in a team that is going to be attractive to the market. That’s what we tried to do at the time.”
One of his changes was bringing in new head coach Nick Nurse, replacing Dwayne Casey.
Ujiri relied upon his skills as a scout, together with an existing scouting team he oversaw, to bring overlooked and underappreciated athletes to Toronto.
He orchestrated a blockbuster 12-player trade, one that sent Carmelo Anthony to New York in exchange for a group of promising young players.
“Scouting is my background,” he told Business Insider. “I still do it as much as I can. It was one of the keys to how I grew up in the NBA. It’s something I just take pride in.”
Ujiri spent six years playing professionally in Europe. He played in England for a year, then for a second-division team in Belgium and a team in Germany. After ending a professional playing career in 2002, Ujiri worked as a youth coach in Nigeria. During an NBA summer league game in Boston, he met David Thorpe, who eventually introduced him to college coaches.
He served as director of international ccouting and NBA executive for the Denver Nuggets. Likewise, he served as an assistant general manager with the Raptors before moving to Denver. In 2010, Ujiri became the first African-born general manager in the NBA when he was hired to run the Nuggets’ basketball operations department.
According to Gossip Bio, he was named 2012-13 NBA Executive of the Year which he said is one of his biggest achievements.
As a scouter, he traveled to Europe, Africa, Asia, and South America and managed and coached the Nigerian junior and senior national teams.
Ujiri is married to Ramatu Ujiri, a 33-year-old fashion model. Born Ramatu Barry, she grew up in Sierra Leone before moving to the U.S. where she attended Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Part of the attraction was that Ramatu played basketball. They started dating in 2007 and married a few years later. They have three children.
Ramatu’s Twitter bio reads: “Feeling so blessed to have an amazing family! I love being a wife but most of all, being a mother is the BEST gift God has given me!!!”
The fashion model is a Baltimore Ravens fan and celebrated the team’s 2013 Superbowl win.
Ujiri’s passion and mission are helping young Africans to play professional basketball in the U.S. The general manager is at the forefront of the NBA’s Basketball Without Borders Africa program, which promotes basketball throughout the continent.
He also conducts two camps — one for the top 50 players of Nigeria, which is sponsored by Nestle Milo, and another for African big men, which Ujiri sponsors himself with help from Nike.
Ujiri and Basketball Without Borders are profiled in Hubert Davis’s 2016 documentary film “Giants of Africa,” widening the impact of Africa in the NBA.
As the NBA continues to expand its borders, the road from Africa to the U.S. has become a well-paved superhighway thanks in large part to people such as Ujiri and Amadou Fall, the godfather of African basketball.
Beginning in 2003 when Ujiri hosted his first basketball camp in Nigeria, he has played a pivotal role in inspiring young Africans in Nigeria and beyond to use basketball as a catapult to achieving great things.
While players such as Serge Ibaka from the Republic of Congo and Pascal Siakam and Joel Embiid from Cameroon have become well-known stars, thousands of young African men and women not enrolled in college or in the NBA have traveled the road Ujiri helped to pave.
Ujiri preaches to aspiring young players the importance of using the game to create opportunities, and not letting the game use them.
“We have to give the youth a chance,” Ujiri said, “and that’s by building infrastructure, facilities and improving the coaching.”
Ujiri has taken personal offense to President Donald Trump’s alleged comments about immigrants from places like Haiti and his homeland Nigeria, which Trump referred to as “shitholes”. Ujiri said Trump’s comment did not inspire leadership and was unfair to people who are trying to improve their lives.
He also speaks out against international atrocities. In 2014 when he penned a Washington Post op-ed calling on the world to help Nigeria after 300 girls were kidnapped from their school in the village of Chibok.
Ujiri has used his platform with the Toronto Raptors to lend his voice to causes that he dearly believes in.
