{"id":135087,"date":"2025-04-18T08:24:01","date_gmt":"2025-04-18T12:24:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=135087"},"modified":"2025-04-18T08:24:01","modified_gmt":"2025-04-18T12:24:01","slug":"masai-ujiri-fixated-on-raptors-as-championship-contenders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/04\/18\/masai-ujiri-fixated-on-raptors-as-championship-contenders\/","title":{"rendered":"Masai Ujiri Fixated on Raptors as Championship Contenders"},"content":{"rendered":"

The road hasn’t gone smoothly since the Toronto Raptors 2019 NBA Championship run, but Masai Ujiri has plans to return his franchise to those days, and it started with acquiring Brandon Ingram. In ’19, Ujiri had\u00a0<\/span>Kawhi Leonard<\/span><\/a>\u00a0for just one season, but it led to a title. Of course, Leonard proceeded to briskly walk across the Canada\/US border, making his way to the\u00a0<\/span>Los Angeles Clippers<\/span><\/a>\u00a0the soonest chance he got. Since then, Toronto has turned into a wilderness team. They haven’t been contenders in the six years since their title run, but they haven’t been fully basement dwellers either. Nevertheless, the Raptors have appeared to be a franchise without direction, and Ujiri intends to change that.<\/span><\/p>\n

Masai Ujiri Fixated on Raptors as Championship Contenders<\/h2>\n

Toronto Raptors president Masai Ujiri sees acquiring talent as first step to return franchise to championship contenders<\/h3>\n

Ujiri has been considered one of the top front-office figures in the NBA for several years now, even before Toronto captured its first-ever\u00a0<\/span>NBA Championship<\/span><\/a>. The decision to trade beloved Raptors favorite\u00a0<\/span>DeMar DeRozan<\/span><\/a>\u00a0in exchange for Kawhi was risky, but it proved Ujiri’s gall and willingness to take big risks. Luckily, it worked out. Who knows how it would have gone for Ujiri had the Raptors not completed the quest?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Over the past few years, the Raptors have moved further and further away from being contenders. They’ve reached the playoffs just once and the play-in once. Ujiri has also traded away important players like\u00a0<\/span>Pascal Siakam<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<\/span>OG Anunoby<\/span><\/a>. Plus, he’s missed on drafting franchise-changing players, aside from\u00a0<\/span>Scottie Barnes<\/span><\/a>. All that being said,\u00a0<\/span>according to Michael Grange of Sportsnet<\/span><\/a>, Ujiri is determined to change the trajectory the Raptors have aimlessly floated on, and it starts by acquiring talent.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c[Our goal] is getting better and adding more players and building this team and growing to be a championship team,<\/em>\u201d Ujiri said. \u201cA championship is the end goal of all of this, and when that comes, we don\u2019t know, but we have to identify those players and build with those kinds of players.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the day, you have to acquire talent. <\/em>We have to do it in a unique way in the market that we\u2019re in and we\u2019ve got to jump on opportunities that come our way, sometimes after we really study them.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

More moves to come?<\/h3>\n

Although the draft hasn’t been Ujiri’s bread and butter lately (again, aside from Barnes), he has done a respectable job in the trade market. Acquiring Ingram was a solid move, despite the former Pelicans All-Star not playing a single game this season for Toronto. Before Ingram, Ujiri made moves to acquire the likes of\u00a0<\/span>RJ Barrett<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<\/span>Immanuel Quickley<\/span><\/a>\u2014both solid role players.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As Ujiri stated, becoming a\u00a0<\/span>championship contender<\/span><\/a>\u00a0again means adding more players, especially talented ones like Ingram. However, Ujiri’s plans to accomplish this goal will likely involve trades, as Toronto isn’t exactly a free-agent hot spot. Now that Ingram is on board, Ujiri has the offseason to pull another string or two.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a9 John E. Sokolowski-Imagn Images<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The road hasn’t gone smoothly since the Toronto Raptors 2019 NBA Championship run, but Masai Ujiri has plans to return his franchise to those days, and it started with acquiring Brandon Ingram. In ’19, Ujiri had\u00a0Kawhi Leonard\u00a0for just one season, but it led to a title. Of course, Leonard proceeded to briskly walk across the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5081,"featured_media":135088,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1608,62,14],"tags":[308,350,3178,168,1082,1754,1964,3852],"class_list":["post-135087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","category-nba","category-raptors","tag-brandon-ingram","tag-demar-derozan","tag-immanuel-quickley","tag-kawhi-leonard","tag-og-anunoby","tag-pascal-siakam","tag-rj-barrett","tag-scottie-barnes"],"modified_by":"Aaron J Zacharias","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5081"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135087"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":135090,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135087\/revisions\/135090"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}