TORONTO -- Some people in sports hold media availabilities. They take questions, stay on message and all the while hoping it gets over as quickly as possible and does no lasting damage.
Not Masai Ujiri. He gives motivational speeches interspersed with the occasional prompts from the audience. They waver between pep talks and sermons.
The subject is always belief and possibility and hope and the future.
It’s quite a thing.
Every time the Toronto Raptors president and vice-chairman speaks publicly -- which he does only occasionally these days -- every question is taken as a standalone opportunity to talk frankly (within limits) on the given topic. He acknowledges the issue, lays the parameters of solving it (while keeping things usefully vague) and then returns to the theme that permeates his cell structure: winning isn’t easy, but winning is the job, so we’ll figure it out. The best is yet to come.
You can’t fault the approach. Or the track record.
And his timing isn’t bad either. A grey, rainy, February Friday with the Raptors poised to try and extend their NBA-best winning streak to nine games in front of empty seats in the heart of North America’s most locked-down city?
Who wouldn’t want an IV’s worth of good vibes to course around their bloodstream?
Ujiri’s availabilities aren’t not exactly free-flowing or spontaneous, though it can feel that way. He understands the power of his platform and how to craft his message.
For example: When the Raptors host the Denver Nuggets on Saturday at Scotiabank Arena for their only home game until March 1, the building will be empty -- so no warm Toronto welcome for Thaddeus Young, the veteran forward the Raptors picked up at Thursday’s trade deadline. One of the liveliest buildings in the NBA has been an echo chamber for pumped in crowd noise since Dec. 31. Prior to that, the building was only permitted to be half full, dating back to Dec. 16. It’s been two months since 19,800 were allowed into a Raptors game at home.
The Raptors have fared very well without fans. Due to a slow start to the season in general, the Raptors are 6-9 at home when the building was full and are 10-3 since capacity was reduced, which coincided with a return to health for the roster and a strong run of play since early December.
But record aside. Ujiri would like to let people -- as in the type of officials who might be able to do something about it -- know that it’s been less than ideal and it would be nice if it would change, sooner than later.
“We’ve had conversations. MLSE is in conversations,” he said as part of a wide-ranging 45-minute question-and-answer session. “With these things there are a lot of studies. There are a lot of unknowns. They tried to take their time to do the right things. The way it’s trending, I’m hoping maybe we can get back sooner than the proposed dates."
“Just like anything, you struggle for energy,” Ujiri said of the impact of playing home games without crowds. “You struggled to adjust to it overall. For me, I feel this game is all about playing, winning, human interaction. It’s the biggest thing I feel sometimes, and it’s lost. I know there are people that are going through more… [but] this is the business I work in, and I have to push as much as I can for the business that we work in and the game that we play… hopefully we can get back to normal.”
The current provincial plan would allow Scotiabank Arena to be back at 50 per cent capacity by Feb. 21. Would Ujiri love it the Raptors could be back at full capacity by March 1?
It’s not in his control, but there’s nothing wrong with throwing that energy out there and seeing what happens.
Ujiri is wise enough to understand that the executive for a multi-billion-dollar sports and entertainment company can’t be seen to be bucking recommendations from public health experts or teeing off on elected officials. But watching team after team come to Scotiabank Arena and gaze out on empty seats after spending their one night in the city stuffed in their hotels in a locked-down city -- this a year after spending an entire season in Tampa due to the complications of crossing the border during an earlier stage of the pandemic -- hasn’t been easy.
One of Ujiri’s greatest feats during his time as the most visible sports leader in Canada’s biggest market has been to preach the virtues of Toronto and Canada -- not only so that a league with 29 US-based teams would get the message, but that Torontonians and Canadians would buy-in as well.
The whole “We the North” slogan is as much a message to fans in Toronto as it is a face to present to the NBA as a whole.
“The narrative of not wanting to come to this city is gone,” Ujiri famously said when introducing Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green on the eve of the championship season, repeating a message he’d been hammering home for five years at that point. “I think that's old, and we should move past that. Believe in this city. Believe in yourselves."
And over time, it happened, culminating with the 2019 NBA title, and the attention it generated, right down to the images of the epic parade that flooded social media.
The Raptors were champions. The Raptors were a thing.
It will remain to be seen if the past 15 months or so will have significantly set back the Raptors and the near-decade of heavy lifting Ujiri has done to win over the minds of the NBA and its players, coaches, executives and agents.
Privately Ujiri has expressed frustration and concern, sounding no different than anyone else in the dark days of January when it seemed like anything approaching ‘normal’ was moving farther out of reach than ever and wondering if the policies in place were fair or good and why they were so different here than, say, almost everywhere else professional basketball is played.
But like most of us, he gets the big picture.
“I do believe in the science. I do believe in that,” he said. “This thing is going to get better and to head in the right direction and hopefully we can… we miss our fans even though I like the seat I have right now.”
Yet Ujiri is choosing to look forward with his trademark belief, hope and optimism.
He looks at his young team -- rolling after a sluggish start -- and doesn’t see a hot streak, but the start of something, drawing comparisons to the 2013-14 Raptors team that started slowly, caught fire and eventually set what was then a franchise-record for wins before losing a seven-game series to the veteran-laden Brooklyn Nets.
It kicked off a seven-year run where the Raptors played at a 54-win pace, won nine playoff series, made it to the Eastern Conference Finals and won the title.
No one saw it coming then, but Ujiri sees the potential of something similar taking shape guided by Raptors head coach Nick Nurse, who Ujiri praised as a “mad scientist.”
Raptors guard Fred VanVleet and forward Pascal Siakam are comparable if not ahead of where Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan were then.
The idea of Scottie Barnes -- the precocious rookie that Toronto took with the 4th overall pick, the reward for what Ujiri called without prompting “the Tampa Tank” -- made Ujiri smile for a full 10 seconds it seemed, before answering.
“He’s everything that we wanted. Honestly, basketball, the spirit of the kid is incredible,” he said. The lifelong scout added that the 20-year-old is as advanced as any rookie he’s seen since Carmelo Anthony, the 18-year veteran who played for Ujiri in Denver (though not as a rookie) and will be a first-ballot Hall-of-Famer when he retires.
Gary Trent Jr. has far exceeded expectations and OG Anunoby also. Ujiri's bullish on Precious Achiuwa and Chris Boucher. He even found cause for optimism for Malachi Flynn, the second-year point guard who has tumbled into the nether regions of Nurse’s rotation.
It’s not a perfect roster, but Ujiri is less focussed on the problems than the solution, and in assembling an unconventional lineup that plays unconventionally -- six-foot-nine Siakam as point guard; six-foot-one Fred VanVleet as shooting guard; lineups without shooters but filled with six-foot-nine agents of chaos -- he believes he’s found an approach that can last and can take the Raptors somewhere.
It’s the start of something, is the theme.
“I feel strongly that we can create our own style of play and bring these types of players and figure out a way to do it,” he said. “Look, will it succeed? I pray does, I'm hoping it does, and I think it will.”
Since the championship, the Raptors have been on their back heel just a bit. Leonard left before the championship parade had even been cleaned up; the spirited title defence in 2019-20 ended in frustration in the bubble in Orlando. The lost season in Tampa followed and Ujiri’s own situation -- he played his free agency to the limit before finally re-signing -- kept the city and the franchise on edge.
And even as this season has played out, an empty arena and all it stood for has taken some of the air out of the balloon.
The moment may be less than ideal -- February in Toronto, a city still on lockdown, an arena that remains empty -- but Ujiri sees brighter days, and soon.
“I have to build a team here; we have to build a team that wins here. And that, to me, is no reason for us to sit down and cry or cry over spilled milk,” he said, building to a rousing finish. "We've won here, and we’re going to win again. I truly, truly believe that. That's why I stayed here. This is one of the best places; one of the best teams in the NBA.”
