Former NBA Championship Executive Masai Ujiri Becomes Dallas Mavericks New President

A new era of Dallas Mavericks basketball is officially underway as the team introduced Masai Ujiri, the architect of the Toronto Raptors’ 2019 NBA Championship squad, as its new team president.

Ujiri spent 12 seasons in Toronto, guiding the franchise’s most accomplished era that included an NBA Coach of the Year Award for former Dallas assistant Dwane Casey, a controversial coaching change, and big swings for star players like forward Kawhi Leonard.

Now, he hopes to do the same in Dallas, focusing on the want to build a winner as quickly as possible throughout his first Dallas Mavericks press conference.

“We want to get back to winning” Ujiri said. “This is a winning organization. We want to get back to that, and I know the fanbase wants that, I know the organization wants that, I know leadership wants that, and I know the NBA wants that. I’m hoping and I’m praying, and that’s to tell you guys that I’m here, and winning is my drive, and winning is going to be the drive of this organization.”

The main player that has Masai Ujiri excited about the new opportunity in Dallas, is Rookie of the Year and former No. 1 overall pick Cooper Flagg. Flagg is seen as the cornerstone of the franchise, and the new president believes there are promising pieces around him, even though he’ll likely be adding pieces his own way.

“The one difficult thing to find anywhere in sports is a generational player, and we have one,” Ujiri said. “We’ve planted a flag here. We have one player here that can turn everything, and it is so hard to find in sports. It is my job, and it is our job to continue to build these young players on this team. …All these guys have to figure it out, and [we have to] put them in the right situations to perform, and we build the team from there.”

As Ujiri takes the reins in Dallas, the surprising Luka Doncic trade from 2025 still hangs over the franchise, but it’s his hope that building a winner will help the fanbase and the city heal and move on. While Doncic is also a generational talent, the Mavericks franchise is now hitting the reset button to build a winner out of what it has.

“We’ve gone through that some, but we have something shiny here, and we’re going to win,” Ujiri explained. “We’re going to win here in Dallas.”