Can Masai Ujiri Bring Toronto Success to Dallas?

One of the surprises of the week happened on Monday when the Dallas Mavericks, they landed Masai Ujjeiri as their new president of basketball operations.

Massiah, most recently, uh, the president in Toronto, helped that team win a championship.

He was also in Denver, won the Executive of the Year Award in 2013.

Rachel, some of these, I had this story on Sunday night, not a surprise to you.

I don't know why you said it was a surprise.

I had this story on Sunday night.

filed it as the lead of my newsletter on Monday, which usually goes up around 11 or 12 Pacific time.

And sure enough, ESPN, Sham Sharania, Tim McMahon, they had it nailed before me.

They got it up.

That just goes to show that in 2026, Or even before then, you just can't wait.

You can't wait.

If you got the information, you got to burp it out on Twitter.

I was trying to give my newsletter readers, subscribe to the newsletter people.

I was trying to give my newsletter readers, uh, something fresh to read about, but, uh, got beaten to the punch.

But Messiah is a Messiah is exactly what Patrick Jamal was looking for.

Like he, he was going big game hunting this offseason.

He was throwing names out there like Brad Stevens, Sam Presty, Bob Myers, all the marquee guys.

In the executive ranks, and Massia fits that mold.

Um, he hasn't had as much success in recent years as Sam, as Brad, as Bob Myers, but he was a great executive in Denver.

He did engineer the boldest trade in modern memory.

I don't know how you want to frame it, and going to roll the dice on Kawhi Leonard that paid off with Dallas with, uh, Toronto's first championship.

Now he gets a chance to run the Mavericks.

What do you think of that fit with Massiah in Dallas?

Well, first of all, I think he's a great guy.

So he's going to really slot into that organization.

Well, I have so much respect for him as an executive.

I think he knows how to push the right buttons.

And most importantly, he is the experienced hand that Patrick Dumont has obviously decided after the debacle of the last year and a half that he needs.

I thought it was interesting that the deal included him being alternate governor.

Yeah, he wanted a piece of the action down there.

So clearly this sort of chain of command, the authority that he's going to have there is going to be very high.

Obviously.

Obviously the owner is still the owner, you know, that always, that ownership always has the final say.

But this felt to me like a pretty clear signal of Dumon saying, you are the basketball guy, you run the team.

I'm going to stay out of it.

And I think that that's worthy of what Massiah Ujiri has done, and I think he's the right guy to do it.

And obviously, look, he's starting with Cooper Flagg, and you just can't underestimate what a stroke of, you know, luck, 1.8% luck that that is.

And so I have complete faith that he will be able to.

To Build a great team around Cooper, and I'm excited to see what happens in Dallas.

It's a great market and it's really fun basketball down there, and those fans deserve it, man.

So I'm, I'm excited to see what happens going forward.

Yeah, the cupboard isn't bare in Dallas.

I mean, Cooper is obviously a franchise player and all of that stuff.

I mean, look, they've got two first round picks in this June's draft.

Like that's is projected to be an excellent draft.

One of those picks in the lottery.

You never know how that's gonna go.

That went well for them last time around.

Um, so he's gonna have some, some .

Ability to maneuver in, in Dallas.

I think the biggest question he's gonna face early on, and look, for, it goes without saying I should hope that Jason Kidd's going to remain the head coach.

He is well liked.

He is well liked in Dallas.

He is well liked by Kelly Flagg, the mother of Cooper Flagg, who thinks he's done a phenomenal job coaching his son, which he has, yeah, coaching her son, which he has down there.

Um, so he'll be back on the bench, uh, in Dallas.

I think the biggest roster decision is gonna be Kyrie Irving.

Um, the previous administration was all in on bringing Kyrie back next year to be the point guard opposite Cooper Flagg.

They believed his skills would complement Cooper.

I can see why they would think that.

I wonder if Masia Gerry has the same thought process.

Um, Kyrie has 2 years left in his contract.

The last one of those two is a player option, at around 40 million, I think, for each of those years.

Uh, he's still a high-level player, at least he was before he went out with this knee injury.

I believe he's gonna be completely healthy going into next year.

He probably, he probably could have come back this year, but what was the point?

Um, so I think that's, uh, I think they could bring him back.

He could fit into what they're trying to do, but if Massia wants to go into the full rebuild.

You know, see what the market is for Kyrie.

I'm sure there'll still be a market.

Maybe there's a first-round pick out there you can get for him.

Maybe there's a couple of first-round picks out there you can get for him.

Like, look, there's going to be a bidding war in the weeks ahead for Giannis Tendakopo.

Maybe you start looking at the teams that lose that bidding war and say, well, I hope we don't have Giannis, but we've got this early 30s point guard who can score the hell out of the basketball.

Uh, would you like to talk about Kyrie Irving?

I'm curious to see what direction he takes with Kyrie because everything else is kind of, Whatever on that roster.

You can move some guys in and out, but Cooper Flagg is the franchise.

These young picks they're gonna have are the next guys up.

Uh, I wonder what he's gonna do with Kyrie Irving.

I would trade him.

That, that is absolutely what I would do.

I absolutely would, yes, because look, as we keep saying, as everyone on earth keeps saying, it is hard to see a team challenging San Antonio and Oklahoma City in the near, near future.

And that is not just because of the teams they are right now.

It is because How loaded they are in the cupboard with draft picks, not only to draft good players, but to make deals to supplement rosters if they need to over these next few years.

If you're looking at the timeline you want to be on as a franchise in the West, nothing's guaranteed.

You could have injuries on both the Spurs and the Thunder again, knock on all the wood.

But if you're playing the odds, the odds are that being a team that has a great start in Cooper Flagg and then is building a young squad around him.

That will peak, not right now, but in the next , you know, 34 years.

That's the position you'd ideally want to be in, in the West.

And I think that putting yourself, as I said, they do control picks this year, they don't control their picks for the next few years after that.

And I think if you could get Kyrie and you could, I mean, if you could trade Kyrie and get more draft capital there, maybe turn that into something or maybe just draft well around Cooper, I would absolutely make that deal.

And also Kyrie, he's 34 right now.

And I believe in Kyrie Irving.

I have seen him do amazing things.

I think that his leadership has really grown in the last few years.

I think Dallas and Jason Kidd were just the right fit for him, as well as I want to give credit to Kyrie.

Kyrie has done the work and he has made himself into more of a player who inside the locker room, not only you trust, but you want to give that leadership to, and I'm very impressed with him on that score.

That being said, wouldn't he rather play for a contender, maybe .

In the next few years, which isn't going to be the Mavericks.

I'm sorry.

No matter how good Cooper Flagg is, I do not see the Mavericks winning the title in the next year or two years.

And so I, I, that is a move I would make and that I would trust Messia to make because he has shown he's got a savvy market when it comes to trades.

Kyrie signed on to first play with Lukadoncic, then he signed on to play with Anthony Davis.

He signed on to play for a contender.

This team's light years away from being contenders, so maybe there is a Uh, cordial way to go about, uh, a divorce between Kyrie.

I, I do think it probably behooves the The Mavericks to bring him back early just to show people that he's still unless you, unless , unless there's a team out there that's convinced that he's fine and will give you maximum value back in they're OK with, I, you know better than me how all the tampering stuff works if they give permission.

I don't know how it works.

If Kyrie works out for someone, I mean do that, but you think teams still wanna see, I think teams still wanna see like hey.

You're out there on the floor.

You're the same guy we saw before the injury.

Like, even if it's just like a month of basketball, I think teams still want to see that now.

Maybe, look again, the Giannis stuff, I think could change everything this summer.

There may be some desperate teams this summer.

6 or 7 teams are gonna make a run at Giannis.

So we'll, we'll see how that plays out.

But, um, yeah, I'm kind of with you there.

I, I think trading him, getting a couple of draft picks if you can, um.

Getting it maybe a shorter contract back in return, more players that might fit long term around Cooper Flagg, that probably makes the most sense, but we'll see what happens there.

But I like to hire, uh, Massiah is an excellent executive.

He's gonna get back in sooner or later.

Everything I've been hearing about him was that he was hungry to get back in.

He didn't like the way things really ended in Toronto.

He wanted to.

You know, try to do what he did there again.

Build a championship team out there.

So, um, we'll see what happens down in Dallas.

I'm sure he's gonna hire some people too.

I don't know if the current guys stay, uh, Matt Ricardi, Michael Finley.

I don't know.

Dennis Lindsay was the runner up, I was told for that job in Dallas.

So, uh, I think they made, I mean, Dennis is great.

I think they made the right choice.

This is gonna be, I'm very interested.

This has turned them from already being an intriguing team to a very intriguing team.

And again, not immediately, but going forward.

Yeah, I agree with that.