He has done it before. Masai Ujiri has taken a group of young, talented players, tweaked the roster here and there and constructed an NBA championship team. There’s a sense that he is truly excited about the possibility of doing it again.
It won’t be easy — nothing truly memorable is — but the vigour with which the newly minted vice-chairman and president of the Raptors is approaching the future is palpable. He is “home,” as he calls it, and he’s ready to start the steady climb to the top again.
“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,” Ujiri said in a wide-ranging media session that went about an hour Wednesday afternoon.