The “Future Starts Now" branding “wasn’t subtle, and neither was the message"Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images
The Raptors yesterday announced “expensive” new contacts for their two "most important players," F Scottie Barnes and G Immanuel Quickley, and as they shared the stage with President Masai Ujiri, above them was one of several banners situated around the venue which read: “Future Starts Now,” according to Jost Lewenberg of TSN.ca. The branding “wasn’t subtle, and neither was the message.” Several trades last season “closed the book” on Toronto’s championship past, while “unofficially turning the page to a new era.” Dishing out “north of” $400M to the franchise’s next star duo “has a way of making it feel very official” (
TSN.ca, 7/8). SPORTSNET.ca’s Michael Grange reported the contracts “aren’t simply rewards for a job well done; they’re market-driven bets” Ujiri has placed on what Barnes and Quickley can do for a team coming off a 25-win season and a “franchise in competitive limbo.” The challenge Barnes and Quickley are facing and the expectations they will be working under “are significant.” It is “hard to undersell the bet the Raptors are making here” (
SPORTSNET.ca, 7/8).
FUTURE STARTS NOW: In Toronto, Mike Ganter wrote the signings end a “low point for the organization” that Ujiri referred to as “bringing shame to the people that operate the business.” Ujiri admitted he has “not felt good about the Raptors for the past 18 months,” but the “positive feeling, the happy feeling the team brought him for the 10 years before this recent down period returned on the second day of the Raptors most recent draft.” Ujiri said it has been a “tough year and a half.” He added, “I don’t know, maybe that’s partly my fault and partly things coming at us in different ways.” Ujiri: “It just wasn’t us. That’s not who we are and that’s not what I wanted to be. ... That’s not what this team, the fans, this city deserve in any way.” Ganter wrote now with the “two prime building blocks of this team locked up for five years, there is a definite path” (
TORONTO SUN, 7/8).
VERY REFRESHING: THE ATHLETIC’s Eric Koreen notes to hear Ujiri “not only take some accountability for a disastrous 2023-24 season” but also “express a level of embarrassment about it was refreshing.” For Ujiri, his “legacy is set: He’s the guy who brought a title to Toronto.” There is “more to add, though.” He can go down as an exec who “won a title but could not find a way to sustain it, or he could rebuild the franchise, virtually from the ground up this time” (
THE ATHLETIC, 7/9).
WONDERFULLY STRANGE: The GLOBE & MAIL’s Cathal Kelly wrote the Raptors made a major announcement yesterday: they “signed their own players” -- usually, that “deserves a press release.” Kelly noted that “you “don’t do what the Raptors did,” which was rent a room and “invite everyone you know.” The Raptors have “something no one else in the Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment stable possesses -- imagination.” They can “imagine what it’s like to be a fan in Toronto, where nothing is going right and no one can admit that out loud.” The result was a “wonderfully strange press event” (
GLOBE & MAIL, 7/8).
POST-TITLE REBUILD: In Toronto, Feschuk & Arthur writes the Raptors “didn’t fall apart” after losing F Kawhi Leonard in 2019. The team “lurched from low point to low point,” to the "fifth-worst record in franchise history." For Ujiri, the “result has been ... well, humbling might be the best word for it.” How did it happen? How did a championship team lose its way? Inside the organization, they have “asked themselves the same thing, or something like it: What could we have done differently?” But now, there is “a lot riding on Barnes.” Considering he has acknowledged being in “less-than-optimal shape in his disappointing sophomore season” and has “shown signs of being less than receptive to veteran mentorship, the franchise can only hope he grows into his role, and pronto.” Unlike the other franchises in town, the Raptors “set the bar as high as it could go.” Now, they are “back down with everyone else in this town: with glittering resumes gathering dust, memories and rings packed away,” and the “hope they still have the excellence that worked before” (
TORONTO STAR, 7/9).
