Copyright thestar
If Friday ushered in a new era in Raptorland, it didn’t feel much like one. In a lot of ways, it probably should have. For the first time in 13 years, Masai Ujiri didn’t take the microphone for his usual media-day press conference. Fired as team president in June, a victim of a less than sure-handed post-championship rebuild and a fractious relationship with changing ownership, Ujiri wasn’t around to use his global citizen gravitas to sell his usual grand pronouncements from the mount. So that felt different. So did the messaging supplied by the new man in charge, Bobby Webster. The closest Webster came to delivering a grand pronouncement was to say he didn’t plan on making one. If Ujiri once famously announced his presence by hopping on a stage and shouting “F--- Brooklyn” in the lead-up to a 2014 playoff series against the Nets, the understated Webster seems unlikely to spout public profanity any time soon. “It’s not my natural personality,” Webster said. “I’m not going to come out here and make sweeping statements and pound my fist on the table.” For all that, Friday felt a lot like same old, same old. Webster can’t be credibly presented as a new face, not after more than a decade spent as Ujiri’s right-hand man. Webster acknowledged that he’s been “heavily involved” in creating the less-than-optimal situation he now inherits as his own. No matter one’s level of fieriness, there hasn’t been much worth pounding the table about in Raptorland for too long. This is a team that won 30 games last year and 25 the year before, and has won one playoff series since its magical run to the 2019 title. This is a team projected to have a top-10 payroll that’s coming off a bottom-10 record. And as Webster underlined Friday, when he acknowledged that he’s as interested as anyone to see how Toronto’s pricey pieces ultimately fit, even the folks who built this wildly expensive roster can’t be sure if they can believe in it. The question marks outnumber the certainties. There are potential issues of role duplication with the highly paid likes of Scottie Barnes and Brandon Ingram and RJ Barrett. There’s the usual lack of three-point shooting, not to mention a shortage of credible size and the absence of a proven point guard. Same old, same old, in other words. If you wanted to spin Friday as the dawn of a new era, though, there was a way to get there. There was a time when MLSE felt it was important to make a splash with a top executive hiring. When Ujiri arrived to take over the basketball operation in 2013, he was the reigning NBA executive of the year for his work with the Denver Nuggets. When Ujiri’s predecessor Bryan Colangelo got here in 2006, he’d been named executive of the year two seasons earlier as GM of the Phoenix Suns. Both Ujiri and Colangelo came aboard with five-year deals. Webster, in stark contrast, is nobody’s golden boy. When he was pronounced the ultimate winner of the summertime search for a new team president, he wasn’t named team president. All Webster got was a modest extension on a relatively skimpy existing deal. Not that anybody is crying for him — he’s a well-paid executive running one of 30 NBA operations — but it’s safe to say he’s on thinner ice than his two predecessors. That’s probably fair. The roster Webster has been heavily involved in assembling has been the butt of scorn this off-season, when Ingram’s agent spouted off about how the player couldn’t have secured his Toronto money anywhere else and rival executives groused about how Immanuel Quickley’s lucrative contract set unreasonable expectations among his peer group. But the Raptors, as the only franchise located outside the United States, have long considered it essential to make unconventional bets on players that don’t always make sense to observers. And Webster vowed to uphold that tradition. “We’re gonna not think the same way as the rest of the NBA,” Webster said. “That theme, I think, will always carry through.” For all that, unconventional bets that don’t cash are called losers. This is a prove-it moment for Webster that comes attached to a ticking clock. And on Friday he smartly acknowledged the need to promptly prove that this roster can justify the outlay. “The basketball is always the urgent piece,” Webster said. “If we don’t come out and we’re not competitive and we’re having (struggles) then it forces us to evaluate it.” Fans can hope Webster evaluates at a quicker clip than his former boss, whose legendary hemming and hawing put the franchise in its current situation. “We won’t be afraid to make change,” Webster said. If Webster means it, there’s where he could promptly differentiate himself from the giant he’s succeeding. “Masai’s incredibly intense, inspirational, loves to give a good motivational speech, so we’ll probably miss those,” Webster said. “But it’s also a great time for us to sort of spread our wings as well.”
