As a raptors fan it’s hard not to be salty but you guys got a franchise changer, he’s so good.

Masai always got mad quotables. He’s a gifted speaker

Happy for you guys 

He actually knows about basketball! Whoda thought that’s helpful!

Masais aura is unmatched

You will love Masai. Fuck Ed rogers for getting rid of him

If I was a Mave fan I’d be fucking stoked that somehow this whole debacle turned into Cooper Flagg and a this dude as my new gm.

Losing Luka clearly sucks, but the aftermath could have been sooooo much worse.

Underrated part of Masai is he really makes you believe and is an instant culture changer.

Raps fans will remember his iconic press conference where a reporter says something along the lines of why is it hard to bring free agents to Toronto and he responded with this inspiring declaration of how we need to stop talking like that and believe in ourselves and believe that this is a great place to be and win and that success would follow, and it did.

Especially how stacked the West is in the superstar category.

It also explains exactly why teams tank and why it suddenly seems even more of a thing. 

I mean Jesus even with his Cooper Flagg example here, that was a 1.7% chance to get him!

Yeh but he named one of the guys they gave up lol

PTSD won’t let him say Lebron

What’s wild is all those guys are just in the west alone.

They have PJ Washington

Imagine if we had Luka

Imagine they had Mike Conley

They could’ve… if Mavs picked him instead of Josh Green

Or a motivated Dayo

Because you get paid millions to run a basketball team

Very true. It’s hard to find one. Better when they’ve already been found. 

Plus, you have a rich owner willing to give his GMs so much power he let your predecessor trade Luka.

Big market but who are the biggest Dallas signings ? That was a thing for a while

Are they a big market? What free agents do they get lol…they couldn’t even get Deandre Jordan

Jokic is out by 35. Wemby needs to get his legacy by 32. Vic could go 35 you never know, but it’s a big question mark.

He’s gonna play till 37, but his decline will start earlier than that. He has the kind of game where decline in athleticism won’t be as bad as long as he keeps up his conditioning.

at 37 yrs old max salaries might be $85mil per year. he’s staying

He’s an incredible culture guy. After the Luka trade he’s exactly what Dallas needs to inspire hope. He succeeded in Denver and Toronto

what a rare quality. i heard none of the other candidates VALUED the opportunity.

I’m half expecting him and Fernando Alonso to both be competing in the 2030s at this rate tbh

Bronny 1-2 years

He built a championship team with Lowry (got old and requested a trade), Kawhi (left in free agency), FVV (would’ve cost way too much, it was good to let him go), Marc Gasol (got old), and Pascal Siakam (traded to kick off the rebuild)

Ultimately it just made sense that they had to rebuild after the championship. Nothing that Masai did would’ve led to the Raptors contending for years after 2019

Yea ia, nothing will convince me that race isn’t at least part of the equation here. Ed Rogers taking full ownership of MLSE and is a Canadian MAGAt who pals around in Mar-A-Lago. MLSE owns a ton of teams but Ed’s only real beef with any team executive is with Masai, the only Black exec, which is xrazy when he’s the only one to have delivered a title (at least since Toronto FC’s GM has long moved on). Probably thinks Masai is “DEI.”

Prob same reason he doesn’t want to invest in women’s sports. Ed is dumb as rocks too, it would’ve made total sense for MLSE to own the Toronto Tempo but he didn’t see the potential in women’s basketball because it “loses money”. But a) the W’s finances are drastically improving and b) any deficit is miniscule compared to the explosion in team valuations recently. Plus if there’s one city in North America as starved as any for more women’s pro teams its Toronto. Only NY, LA and Chicago have larger metropolitan areas in Canada-US, the Tempo have the whole country to itself and the city is pretty damn progressive and excited for women’s sports. Ed Rogers really is just one of thoese old, dumb, white boomers who only got where he is because he inherited his daddy’s company shares.

I know not everything is race, but look at who he and Pelley just hired for the Leafs bro. Most valuable team in the NHL and they hire a former failed GM who basically got kicked out of the league and who hasn’t even worked in hockey for like 6 years. The guy has been running Wendy’s and Tim Horton’s franchises and they hire that dude for the NHL team but fire Masai (architect of a title champion) on the NBA side. Toronto sports are so cooked, man. Congrats to the Mavs though, they got a good one.

He’ll be playing.

why not?

why not, is he going to lose his athleticism or something?

in 6 years, max salaries might be ~$85mil per year

I dunno man doesn’t seem like you’ve been watching the league. Different champs every year. Jokic won one time and hasn’t looked like a dominating playoff force outside of that year. OKC went to 7 games in the Finals last year and Hali’s injury was significant in that series. Id say the league is pretty evenly matched along the top and any GM is gonna want a top tier talent to have a shot at building a contender. Hardly the time of “eras”

He was listing western conference players.

Tim Connelly is just as good as Masai

That’s not the context of this statement at all. He’s explaining why he took this job and has yet to take another job. Flagg was the extra piece Dumont had to play, the ace up his sleeve, to convince Masai to take the job. This is about Masai and why this job, not about Flagg.

Send the Lakers to the East? No one would expect it

famously fat suit strip club harden is 37 this year. those guys will play.

SGA has said he won’t be playing close to 40.

The numbers don’t really matter in his statement tbh