Mavericks fired general manager Nico Harrison<\/a>, who was dismissed after the Luka Don\u010di\u0107 trade roiled the team\u2019s fan base and dropped the Mavericks from contender status to one of the worst teams in the NBA.<\/p>\nPer league sources, Mavericks governor Patrick Dumont greatly valued experience in the search for Harrison\u2019s successor. The Mavericks had significant interest in Bob Myers, who won four championships with the Golden State Warriors, and Tim Connelly, the Minnesota Timberwolves\u2019 lead basketball executive, before choosing Ujiri.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m honored to join the Dallas Mavericks and step into this role at such an important time for the organization,\u201d Ujiri said. \u201cThis is a franchise with a proud history, passionate fans, and a commitment to winning. I look forward to working with our players, coaches, and leadership team to build something that reflects that standard and competes at the highest level. We will win in Dallas.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ujiri and the Raptors parted ways almost a year ago. While Ujiri possesses an ownership stake in the WNBA\u2019s Toronto Tempo, he made it clear that he was interested in running an NBA front office again.<\/p>\n
Myers, league sources said, had no desire to leave his role as president of Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, the management company that owns the Philadelphia 76ers and the NHL\u2019s New Jersey Devils, among other sports properties. Minnesota ownership was unlikely to let Connelly out of his contract to come to Dallas, league sources said.<\/p>\n
Ujiri, 55, was considered one of the best available candidates, and Dumont was able to convince him to come aboard.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Dallas Mavericks are committed to being a world-class organization with a strong culture and focused on winning championships,\u201d Dumont said in a statement. \u201cMasai Ujiri is one of the great basketball leaders of this generation and his addition to our franchise is a critical step in meeting our goals. We are honored to have him join the Mavs family. We welcome his energy and determination along with his leadership, experience and many accomplishments as a basketball executive. We are very excited about the future of our team.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Mavericks plan to introduce Ujiri on Tuesday afternoon. On Sunday, the team will learn its fate in the NBA Draft Lottery. The Mavericks, who have a 29 percent chance of leaping into the top four, moved up in the draft lottery for the first time in franchise history last year and selected Cooper Flagg with the No. 1 pick.<\/p>\n
This past season, Flagg became the first rookie since Michael Jordan to lead his team in points, rebounds, assists and steals. Flagg became the third player in Mavericks history to win Rookie of the Year after Jason Kidd (1995) and Don\u010di\u0107 (2019).<\/p>\n
Ujiri will get to shape the Mavericks\u2019 roster around Flagg as he sees fit.<\/p>\n
Ujiri\u2019s plans for the coming months should become clearer Tuesday, when he will answer questions about Kidd\u2019s future as the Mavericks\u2019 coach, the franchise\u2019s front-office structure (holdovers Matt Riccardi and Michael Finley have been co-interim GMs for the past six months) and Kyrie Irving, who can become a free agent in the summer of 2027.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Dallas Mavericks are hiring Masai Ujiri as their president and alternate governor, the team announced Monday. Ujiri,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279205,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,2582,103,3080,6395],"class_list":["post-279204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-mavericks","tag-dallas-news","tag-nba","tag-toronto-raptors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}