On Wednesday, Masai Ujiri FaceTimed with Collin Murray-Boyles, the defensive dynamo the Toronto Raptors had just selected with the ninth pick in the 2025 NBA Draft. “This is awesome, we’re so happy to have you,” Ujiri told him.
At the time, though, Ujiri knew that he wasn’t sticking around to see Murray-Boyles develop. He’d known for some time, according to Keith Pelley, Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment’s president and CEO, that his tenure as Raptors president would not continue into next season. It is extremely atypical for a team to announce the departure of its lead executive directly after the draft, but Ujiri wanted to see the process through.
“Why the timing now? So, Masai and I spoke to each other over a month ago and he asked that if a change were to happen, that it was post-draft,” Pelley told reporters Friday. “And that made the most sense, not to disrupt the draft process. We were holding the ninth pick, a top-10 pick, and of course Masai’s — not only his area of passion but his area of expertise, he’s prolific when it comes to the draft. And we were grateful to have him as the person, with Bobby [Webster], leading our draft.”
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Pelley said that he and Ujiri had “been chatting for probably the last couple of months, last two or three months, about the future.” Asked directly when Ujiri was told he was done, Pelley said: “We talked earlier, at the beginning of this month.”
Webster, Toronto’s general manager, will be among the candidates interviewed for the team’s now-vacant president role, Pelley said. Webster has signed a contract extension with the team — according to Sportsnet’s Michael Grange, this took place in the past few weeks — as have other members of the front office. Firing Ujiri, who has run the front office since his hiring in 2013 (and previously worked for the team under Bryan Colangelo from 2007 to 2010), is a massive change, but Pelley repeatedly used the word “stability” when trying to explain the decision.
“Change is inevitable,” Pelley said. “And what we really thought is, with the current status of our team and the foundation that Masai has built, that this was the time to make the change. The roster is in place. All our players are signed at the luxury tax limit. The front office is renewed, including general manager Bobby Webster. And we have great coaching stability, led by Darko [Rajakovic]. So we’re now going to turn our attention to search for a new team president and we’ll be working with CAA beginning on that later this afternoon.”
Ujiri was entering the final year of his contract. The last time he signed an extension, in 2021, Rogers Communications chairman Edward Rogers reportedly tried to get in the way of it. After Ujiri met with Rogers at Rogers’ cottage that July, Rogers called him and told him he wasn’t worth as much as he was being paid, which upset Ujiri to the point that he considered taking a year off, according to the Toronto Star.
Both parties have downplayed the reported rift in the last few years, but, since Rogers Communications reached a deal to buy Bell’s 37.5% stake in MLSE last September, there had been speculation about Ujiri’s future with the franchise. On June 4, Rogers Communications announced that the NBA (and four other sports leagues) had officially approved the deal.
Asked if it was his decision or Rogers’, Pelley said: “This was my decision, supported by the board.” Asked directly about Rogers’ role, he said that all board members “supply input,” but “they look for the input and the direction and the strategy of where the team is going through their CEO.” Pelley said that, as the person charged with overseeing all of MLSE’s teams, it was ultimately his call.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are going without a team president after deciding not to renew Brendan Shanahan’s contract, but Pelley said the Raptors’ situation is different because they are in the middle of a rebuild. Ujiri’s successor needs to be “an experienced, prominent, strong, successful personality,” Pelley said.
Pelley did not directly answer a question about the role that finances played in parting ways with Ujiri, reportedly one of the league’s highest-paid executives.
“I think there are major factors that go into a decision this large,” he said. “But the primary reason in this case was the situation and where we currently are in basketball operations. As I talked about, the stability with our roster, the stability with our front office and the stability with our coaching staff. And that allowed us to make a decision to move forward.”
It was a strange press conference, and this is a strange situation. Ujiri is beloved in Toronto, having taken over a team that had won only one playoff series in its existence, promised to bring a championship to the city — and the country — and actually pulled it off. Pelley essentially argued that Ujiri had done such a good job with the Raptors’ infrastructure that they no longer needed him. They have “seized the opportunity,” he said, to build on a solid foundation, “so somebody is coming in in the midst of a rebuild and will hopefully expedite that and bring us to a new level quickly.”
The draft was the beginning of an important offseason for Toronto. All signs point to the team trying to take a major step forward after finishing 30-52 and missing the playoffs for the fourth time in the last five seasons. Now, bizarrely, while the front office looks for ways to improve the roster, ownership will be searching for someone to lead that front office.
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