Masai Ujiri: Raptors need ‘culture reset’
After just three playoff series victories in his four seasons as general manager of the Toronto Raptors, Masai Ujiri is doing some soul-searching.
At his year-end press conference on Tuesday after being swept in Round 2 by the Cleveland Cavaliers, Ujiri commented on the state of the team.
“After that performance, we need a culture reset here,” said Ujiri, per Dan Feldman of ProBasketballTalk. “We need to figure it out. Yeah, there’s been some success, but at the end of the day, we’re trying to win a championship here. To me, making the playoffs is nothing. That was back in the day. Now, we have to figure out how we can win in the playoffs. That’s the goal.
“The end of the year was disappointing,” Ujiri went on. “Let’s call a spade a spade. The end of the year was disappointing for us. That series was disappointing for us. We thought we could do better. I don’t know what it is. We’ve started to study it, and I can’t tell exactly what it is. At a point, we looked wide-eyed. We didn’t make shots, I understand. But I sometimes feel that wasn’t our team that we saw out there, to be honest.”
The Raptors enter into an uncertain offseason thanks to the question marks surrounding the respective futures of impending free agents Kyle Lowry (who appears to be increasingly open to leaving) and Serge Ibaka. Head coach Dwane Casey was on the hot seat not too long ago as well, so Ujiri’s comments make it sound like there could be big changes coming to Toronto this summer.
