“Win. Simple, win.” That’s the extent of the answer Masai Ujiri gave me when I pressed him on how he measures success for the Raptors in the 2018-19 season. There was no caveat on if Kawhi Leonard enjoys his one-year trial so much he re-signs or if the franchise reaches the first NBA Finals in team history. The calculation was binary — you either win or you don’t.
That’s often how I looked at the NBA’s Executive of the Year Award. To me it was binary. Isn’t the best executive of any given year the one that constructs the team that holds the Larry O’Brien trophy? Isn’t that the sole goal of a team builder? Wouldn’t every GM who wins exec of the year trade places with the one that won the championship, assuming they aren’t the same person, as was the case for Bob Myers in 2014-15?
Executives all work under the same cap and within the same CBA, so shouldn’t they all have the same high standard of success? On the surface that’s true but each job has its intrinsic advantages and disadvantages in terms of ownership support, budget, market, inherited roster, etc.
The more you analyze the job requirements of an NBA front-office member the more you realize that in actuality a GM’s progress and productivity can’t and shouldn’t be distilled to any one calendar year or regular season.
Case in point, Masai Ujiri’s current Toronto Raptors. Any success they have in the short term comes from the labour of long-term planning.
Historically, media voters are swayed by wins also. Some sort of calculation of moves in the transactions list that are perceived wins plus the team’s number in the win column that season usually dictates who wins executive of the year.
Based on that methodology there is an overwhelming number of other worthy candidates. Chad Buchanan and Kevin Pritchard have built the Indiana Pacers to a place where they’ve been better post-Paul George trade and have enough depth to withstand Victor Oladipo’s season-ending injury and stay competitive.
Donnie Nelson and the Dallas Mavericks don’t have the wins but he’s a dark-horse candidate after trading up for Luka Doncic, drafting Jalen Brunson and then trading for Kristaps Porzingis.
Sean Marks joined the Brooklyn Nets as general manager in 2016, and no team had a worse cap situation and less draft-pick capital at the time. But as they head back to the post-season it’s tough to discern how much credit for Spencer Dinwiddie and Joe Harris turning into key contributors after failing to hold onto jobs elsewhere goes to head coach Kenny Atkinson, who is a Coach of the Year candidate, in relation to Marks.
Same can be said of Jon Horst of the Milwaukee Bucks. Horst has only been the Bucks GM since 2017, and was blessed to inherit MVP candidate Giannis Antetokounmpo. Horst acquired Eric Bledsoe, signed Brook Lopez and Ersan Ilyasova in free agency, and brought in Nikola Mirotic at the deadline. However, the jump the team has taken probably has most to do with replacing coach Jason Kidd with Mike Budenholzer and the natural ascension of ‘the Greek Freak.’
Bob Myers will get credit for landing DeMarcus Cousins, for the taxpayer mid-level exception of $5.3 million — but Cousins called the Golden State Warriors about signing, not the other way around.
Ujiri’s stiffest competition might be Tim Connelly, who replaced Ujiri as the Nuggets’ team president in 2013 when Masai came North. Connelly has owned the draft, nailing second-round picks Nikola Jokic and Monte Morris and hitting on lottery picks like Canadian Jamal Murray.
But no decision-maker has done more with less in more varied ways than the league’s first African-born president.
It’s easy to forget how controversial trading DeMar DeRozan to the San Antonio Spurs in a package for Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green was. Even I questioned how much sense it made to make Dwane Casey the scapegoat of the team’s playoff shortcomings. Now any reasonable observer would say those moves have turned into net positives. In hindsight they seem like no-brainers.
Lost in the hype of the blockbuster trade this summer was the astute decision to re-sign Fred VanVleet to a team-friendly deal and to promote Nick Nurse internally rather than bring in a sexier candidate that would help win the press conference and take off some of the heat associated with parting ways with Casey.
However, the heavy lifting on this team was done long before this past summer. Through the draft and player development, Ujiri’s cultivated Pascal Siakam, VanVleet, Norman Powell, and OG Anunoby as rotation players for a team with championship aspirations.
Which is why fighting for a state-of-the-art training facility like the OVO Athletic Centre and for a G League franchise and building up Raptors 905 should be part of the equation. At first seen primarily as an incubator to develop Bruno Caboclo, 905 has quickly turned into the model development tool in the NBA. Not only has it produced NBA players like Siakam, VanVleet, Powell, Alphonso McKinnie and Caboclo, it also has been a breeding ground for coaches, as Jesse Mermuys developed to become a lead assistant with the Los Angeles Lakers and Jerry Stackhouse has now taken the head job at Vanderbilt.
The paper trail of traditional means of improvement has also been utilized.
Via trades, he’s added proven playoff performers Serge Ibaka, Green, Leonard and, at this year’s deadline, Marc Gasol to raise the ceiling of what this team could achieve.
And although he didn’t acquire the heartbeat of the team, Kyle Lowry — that was done by his predecessor, Bryan Colangelo — he’s resisted the urge to trade him and re-signed him not once but twice.
Neither may play a meaningful playoff minute, but Ujiri further solidified the roster by bringing in Jeremy Lin and Patrick McCaw before the deadline to help Nurse manage minutes down the stretch.
Which is why it’s hard to evaluate any of this in the vacuum of just one year. The hard work done by the Raptors front office in 2016 has just as much to do with their playoff run this year than their moves in February.
To refresh your memory, the Raptors held the No. 9 pick, from the trade Ujiri made with the New York Knicks that sent Andrea Bargnani to the Big Apple for picks, including an unprotected 2016 pick. Toronto used that pick on Jakob Poeltl, who developed in to a nice enough reserve to be part of the package to get Green and Leonard this offseason.
With the Raptors’ own pick at No. 27, they took Siakam, and of all the undrafted players, they identified and signed VanVleet.
R.C. Buford won executive the year that year and even former 76ers GM Sam Hinkie received votes even though he was already out of a job with the Sixers. Retroactively, Ujiri’s 2016 looks to be the most impactful, but that impact is revealing itself now.
Last year Ujiri finished with four first-place votes (worth five) and four third-place votes (worth one) for a total of 24 points — good enough for fifth place behind Daryl Morey, Dennis Lindsey, Dennis, Kevin Pritchard, Danny Ainge.
It would be hard to imagine he doesn’t increase that total dramatically unless he splits votes with Bobby Webster, the team’s GM, who also deserves credit for the team’s roster construction and saving $18 million of salary tax thanks to roster manipulation throughout the season.
In the era where a quarter of the league is tanking to build through the draft, Ujiri has built a championship contender that doesn’t have a lottery pick on the roster. With no huge rebuild, he’s managed to increase the Raptors’ championship chances every year he’s been in the job.
Other GMs’ work this year is comparable. But Ujiri’s work over the last few years, which has come to fruition this year, is unmatched.
Ujiri’s life’s work has made him the most impactful executive in the NBA this season. He may or may not be awarded with executive of the year this year, but his eyes are fixed on a different prize.
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