Masai Ujiri, the newly appointed vice-chairman and president of the Toronto Raptors, made his first public comments Wednesday since it was announced that he was returning to the club that he’s helped define on a new contract – and that new shiny title – back near the beginning of August.
For about 45 minutes, Ujiri held court with an assembled group of media at Hotel X by the exhibition grounds in downtown Toronto.
Over the course of that time, Ujiri touched on a number of topics including what his new title means, exactly, the outgoing Kyle Lowry, the competitive future of the club and the question of if the Raptors will be able to play games in Toronto this coming season.
Here are a few highlights from Ujiri’s media availability on Wednesday.
Raptors want to play in Toronto and don’t have plans for any alternative
Front of mind heading into the rapidly-coming 2021-22 season is whether or not they’ll be allowed to play their home games in Toronto again next season.
Seeing other Toronto pro sports teams like the Toronto Blue Jays and Toronto FC hosting games from the friendly confines of Rogers Centre and BMO Field, respectively, is an encouraging sign that Scotiabank Arena will be hosting Raptors basketball games next season, but that’s still to be determined.
Though nothing is settled on that front yet, Ujiri was emphatic Wednesday in his desire to play back home in Toronto.
“We continue to have lot of discussions about this and our hope is that we’re playing at home,” Ujiri said. “We have no interest, we have not looked elsewhere, we are not going to look elsewhere, we’re playing at home; we’re trying to play at home. That’s the goal for us.
“I told Larry [Tanenbaum] and Adam [Silver] and even Prime Minister Trudeau that playing away set us back a couple of years and we know that, we are ready for that challenge. Playing another year somewhere else will set us back five years. We are not trying to do that.
“We understand all the public health concerns, issues, we’re taking measures. As you saw, we came up with our policy with MLSE on how we intend to even fill out our arenas as we go forward here, as we try to play at home.
“To your question, we’ve talked to the league, we’ve talked to public health officials, we’ve talked obviously with ownership, we’re all together on how we want to get back to at least being safe and trying to get back to a little bit of normal.”
On Tuesday, MLSE, the ownership group of the Raptors, issued a statement (LINK: https://www.sportsnet.ca/nhl/article/mlse-introduce-updated-covid-19-protocols-buildings-september/) saying that they’ll require any employees, event staff or guests entering a venue owned by the organization to show proof of vaccination against COVID-19 or that they had tested negative for the disease come mid September.
This appears to be an indication from MLSE that they’re preparing to host guests at Scotiabank Arena for Toronto Maple Leafs and Raptors games and given how adamant Ujiri was about the matter, surely this means we’ll have live NBA hoops in Toronto again doesn’t it?
“Kyle is the best Raptor”
The Raptors’ off-season has been headline by two gigantic moves for the franchise. Ujiri staying on long-term with the club was, of course, one, and the other was the departure of iconic Raptors point guard Lowry after nine seasons in Toronto where he built up what’s likely a Hall-of-Fame résumé and became known as the best player to ever play for the franchise in many an observer’s eyes, including his now-former boss’s.
“I want to talk about Kyle and it’s been really tough for us to see an incredible player like that go,” Ujiri said. “I had really extensive conversations with Kyle and it was great to spend a lot of time with him in last year in Tampa. And we knew this was coming. The direction of our team was kind of going younger and Kyle still has his incredible goals. Kyle wanted to be here, too, if that was what we were trying to do. We saw our team as kind of being in the middle ground a little bit and wanted to go a little younger so we can start to grow, almost like when Kyle was here in the beginning.
“What that guy has done for this organization, what he has done for this community, his participation in everything that we can ask for. I mean, Kyle had, we had ups and downs here, but I’m telling but even the measure of it when you look at it, the downs were this much. It was great to grow with him here.
“We wish him all the best where he is. He’s in great hands in Miami and that organization. We know their standards and what they want to do. We just hope we beat them four times a year and we’ll be good that way.
“We can’t wait to have him back when we play them here. Yes, we compete in this business and Kyle is part of this family and he’ll be part of this family forever. And I know people ask, I know Larry has already mentioned his jersey, he’s going to get all of everything and some. Is Kyle the greatest Raptor that ever played the game here? Yes, he is. I’m saying it here. Kyle is the best Raptor to play the game over the course of his time.
“It’s incredible what he achieved here, what he took on, growing as a man, his family, Ayahna, the kids, we love them, they are part of us, and they’ll be part of us for a long time. So I know we’ll talk about this for a long time, we’ll talk about this during the year, but I wanted to pay particular attention to what Kyle Lowry has done for us. We owe it to him. He takes so much pride. I know the pride that he took in this organization, this city, and the people of Toronto and Canada as a whole.”
That’s about as effusive praise as you’ll likely ever hear from an executive talking about a player who left the organization, and, as Ujiri said, is well earned given all that Lowry did for the Raptors as an organization.
Ujiri is confident in the roster he’s building
So, as you may have noticed, the Raptors have apparently narrowed in on a specific type of player they like this off-season and have added a bunch of them.
This type being a player who’s about six-foot-eight or six-foot-nine with a seven-foot-plus wingspan, blessed with tremendous athleticism and capable of defending multiple positions.
On paper it doesn’t seem all that bad, but it has been met with some skepticism whether or not this stratagem will work – including from this very author.
Ultimately, of course, it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks of what the roster might look like as long as the boss is happy with it and Ujiri seemed quite confident that the team he, Bobby Webster and their staff is building will be championship quality at some point in the future.
“First of all, we are going to create our own direction,” said Ujiri. “We don’t have to go with the wave of what the NBA is doing, we are such a copycat league … and we have to, I think, right now, ride opportunities and for now our opportunities are I think building around the young players that we have.
“We have very young veterans, they are almost at the same age when we had Kyle and DeMar [DeRozan], there’s Fred [VanVleet], there’s OG [Anunoby], there’s Pascal [Siakam]. We want to build around these guys, and the [Chris] Bouchers, the Khem Birches.
“All these players, they have a level that they need to get to and then there’s the young crop. You guys saw coming up, we just drafted Scottie Barnes and Dalano [Banton], we just got Precious [Achiuwa] in a trade, Malachi [Flynn]. All these guys we want to really develop in some kind of way and I think we have some kind of good history from doing that.
“Our three main players come from our development program, I said it here when I sat here eight years ago, ‘We are going to develop players and we are going to build on that.’ [Now] I’m saying it again: We are going to continue to develop these players and we’re going to find a way to win a championship here based on our development of our players.
“And whatever comes from that, sometimes trades, sometimes you acquire through free agency, we just are not going to sit here and cry that players are not coming here. That’s not what we’re about. I think we’ve gone past that.”
And to that point about development, Ujiri appeared about the potential that No. 4 overall pick Scottie Barnes presents for this Raptors team.
“He was just a player that excited all of us. Knock on wood he has an incredible career ahead of him, But the passion for the game, the levels he’s played at on USA Basketball, U-16, U-18, he’s won at every level,” Ujiri said of Barnes. “It’s crazy when you interview a guy like that and he mentions winning or win 34 times in one interview. All he talks about is winning. This is what we wanted to bring.
“And also, one day we want to play big and long. You look at him, you look at Pascal, you look at OG you look at Boucher, you look at all these players and you look at the feistiness of Fred, of all of them, there is something exciting about these kind of players.”
Certainly doesn’t sound like Siakam is being shopped any time soon
And while on the topic of the roster as constructed now, despite noise during the off-season that Siakam might be on the trading block, to hear it from Ujiri it seems that couldn’t be farther from the truth.
“I know the fanbase, I know people are being hard on him, but trust me, Pascal is a prideful man,” Ujiri said. “Pascal is an unbelievable basketball player. Maybe because he wasn’t playing well, people come up with all this stuff. Pascal is here. Pascal is a Raptor and he’s gonna play with us.”
To add to this, Ujiri also said that he knows that “him and Nick [Nurse] have got to a much, much better place,” referencing the apparent tiff between the Raptors coach and their star forward last season when Siakam reportedly got in a verbal altercation with Nurse after a March game against the Cleveland Cavaliers.
So while it may have seemed logical that the Raptors might consider moving Siakam, especially after they drafted Barnes, Ujiri has indicated otherwise and we should now probably expect to see how a Raptors team led by both Siakam and Barnes might look.
A tampering investigation update
A couple days after the Raptors’ sign-and-trade with the Miami Heat that sent Lowry to South Beach and Achiuwa and Goran Dragic to Toronto was made official, the NBA launched an investigation for tampering violations in the transaction.
So far there hasn’t been much that the Raptors have been able to say about the ongoing investigation except that they’re cooperating with it, but on Wednesday Ujiri provided a small update on how things are proceeding.
“It’s incredible how every NBA team had a deal done by 6:02, no? I don’t know how it happened but all I know is I gave my phone for the investigation. Yeah, I have no comment.”
An update, no matter how minuscule, is still an update.
GUADALAJARA, Mexico – Canada’s Marina Stakusic fell 6-4, 6-3 to Poland’s Magdalena Frech in the quarterfinals of the Guadalajara Open tennis tournament on Friday.
The 19-year-old from Mississauga, Ont., won 61 per cent of her first-serve points and broke on just one of her six opportunities.
Stakusic had upset top-seeded Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia 6-3, 5-7, 7-6 (0) on Thursday night to advance.
In the opening round, Stakusic defeated Slovakia’s Anna Karolína Schmiedlová 6-2, 6-4 on Tuesday.
The fifth-seeded Frech won 62 per cent of her first-serve points and converted on three of her nine break point opportunities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
TORONTO – Alejandro Kirk’s long single with the bases loaded provided the Toronto Blue Jays with a walk-off 4-3 win in the 11th inning of their series opener against the St. Louis Cardinals on Friday.
With the Cardinals outfield in, Kirk drove a shot off the base of the left-field wall to give the Blue Jays (70-78) their fourth win in 11 outings and halt the Cardinals’ (74-73) two-game win streak before 30,380 at Rogers Centre.
Kirk enjoyed a two-hit, two-RBI outing.
Erik Swanson (2-2) pitched a perfect 11th inning for the win, while Cardinals reliever Ryan Fernandez (1-5) took the loss.
Blue Jays starter Kevin Gausman enjoyed a seven-inning, 104-pitch outing. He surrendered his two runs on nine hits and two walks and fanned only two Cardinals.
He gave way to reliever Genesis Cabrera, who gave up a one-out homer to Thomas Saggese, his first in 2024, that tied the game in the eighth.
The Cardinals started swiftly with four straight singles to open the game. But they exited the first inning with only two runs on an RBI single to centre from Nolan Arendao and a fielder’s choice from Saggese.
Gausman required 28 pitches to escape the first inning but settled down to allow his teammates to snatch the lead in the fourth.
He also deftly pitched out of threats from the visitors in the fifth, sixth and seventh thanks to some solid defence, including Will Wagner’s diving stop, which led to a double play to end the fifth inning.
George Springer led off with a walk and stole second base. He advanced to third on Nathan Lukes’s single and scored when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. knocked in his 95th run with a double off the left-field wall.
Lukes scored on a sacrifice fly to left field from Spencer Horwitz. Guerrero touched home on Kirk’s two-out single to right.
In the ninth, Guerrero made a critical diving catch on an Arenado grounder to throw out the Cardinals’ infielder, with reliever Tommy Nance covering first. The defensive gem ended the inning with a runner on second base.
St. Louis starter Erick Fedde faced the minimum night batters in the first three innings thanks to a pair of double plays. He lasted five innings, giving up three runs on six hits and a walk with three strikeouts.
ON DECK
Toronto ace Jose Berrios (15-9) will start the second of the three-game series on Saturday. He has a six-game win streak.
The Cardinals will counter with righty Kyle Gibson (8-6).
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
CALGARY – Mired in their first four-game losing skid in 20 years, the Calgary Stampeders are going back to Jake Maier at quarterback on Saturday after he was benched for a game.
It won’t be an easy assignment.
Visiting McMahon Stadium are the Eastern Conference-leading Montreal Alouettes (10-2) who own the CFL’s best record. The Stampeders (4-8) have fallen to last in the Western Conference.
“Six games is plenty of time, but also it is just six games,” said Maier. “We’ve got to be able to get on the right track.”
Calgary is in danger of missing the playoffs for the first time since 2004.
“I do still believe in this team,” said Stampeders’ head coach and general manager Dave Dickenson. “I want to see improvement, though. I want to see guys on a weekly basis elevating their game, and we haven’t been doing that.”
Maier is one of the guys under the microscope. Two weeks ago, the second-year starter threw four interceptions in a 35-20 home loss to the Edmonton Elks.
After his replacement, rookie Logan Bonner, threw five picks in last week’s 37-16 loss to the Elks in Edmonton, the football is back in Maier’s hands.
“Any time you fail or something doesn’t go your way in life, does it stink in the moment? Yeah. But then the days go on and you learn things about yourself and you learn how to prepare a little bit better,” said Maier. “It makes you mentally tougher.”
Dickenson wants to see his quarterback making better decisions with the football.
“Things are going to happen, interceptions will happen, but try to take calculated risks, rather than just putting the ball up there and hoping that we catch it,” said Dickenson.
A former quarterback himself, he knows the importance of that vital position.
“You cannot win without good quarterback play,” Dickenson said. “You’ve got to be able to make some plays — off-schedule plays, move-around plays, plays that break down, plays that aren’t designed perfectly, but somehow you found the right guy, and then those big throws where you’re taking that hit.”
But it’s going to take a team effort, and that includes the club’s receiving corp.
“We always have to band together because we need everything to go right for our receivers to get the ball,” said Nik Lewis, the Stampeders’ receivers coach. “The running back has to pick up the blitz, the o-line has to block, the quarterback has to make the right reads, and then give us a catchable ball.”
Lewis brings a unique perspective to this season’s frustrations as he was a 22-year-old rookie in Calgary in 2004 when the Stamps went 4-14 under coach Matt Dunigan. They turned it around the next season and haven’t missed the playoffs since.”
“Thinking back and just looking at it, there’s just got to be an ultimate belief that you can get it done. Look at Montreal, they were 6-7 last year and they’ve gone 18-2 since then,” said Lewis.
Montreal is also looking to rebound from a 37-23 loss to the B.C. Lions last week. But for head coach Jason Maas, he says his team’s mindset doesn’t change, regardless of what happened the previous week.
“Last year when we went through a four-game losing streak, you couldn’t tell if we were on a four-game winning streak or a four-game losing streak by the way the guys were in the building, the way we prepared, the type of work ethic we have,” said Maas. “All our standards are set, so that’s all we focus on.”
While they may have already clinched a playoff spot, Alouettes’ quarterback Cody Fajardo says this closing stretch remains critical because they want to finish the season strong, just like last year when they won their final five regular-season games before ultimately winning the Grey Cup.
“It doesn’t matter about what you do at the beginning of the year,” said Fajardo. “All that matters is how you end the year and how well you’re playing going into the playoffs so that’s what these games are about.”
The Alouettes’ are kicking off a three-game road stretch, one Fajardo looks forward to.
“You understand what kind of team you have when you play on the road because it’s us versus the world mentality and you can feel everybody against you,” said Fajardo. “Plus, I always tend to find more joy in silencing thousands of people than bringing thousands of people to their feet.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
