{"id":793126,"date":"2026-05-13T09:38:28","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T09:38:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/793126\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T09:38:28","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T09:38:28","slug":"how-will-the-liberal-masai-ujiri-handle-leading-the-ultraconservative-dallas-mavericks-dallas-mavericks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/793126\/","title":{"rendered":"How will the liberal Masai Ujiri handle leading the ultraconservative Dallas Mavericks? | Dallas Mavericks"},"content":{"rendered":"

On its face, the fit between Masai Ujiri and the Dallas Mavericks is perfect. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a match made in heaven,\u201d Ujiri said<\/a> after being introduced as the franchise\u2019s president of basketball operations and alternate governor last week. \u201cEvery single one of us in this world is chosen for something special, and we just have to find it,\u201d he added<\/a>. \u201cAnd I found basketball.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since he became the first African to run a major sports franchise in the United States as the general manager of the Denver Nuggets in 2010, Ujiri has accomplished everything. After winning Executive of the Year with the Nuggets in 2013, he moved to Toronto and inherited a Raptors franchise unsure of itself. The Raptors were the only NBA team outside the US \u2013 one centered in a city that hadn\u2019t won anything since 1993<\/a> \u2013 and Ujiri had to convince Raptors fans to believe in themselves. He built one of the deepest and most international teams in the NBA after hitting on numerous draft picks and finally swapping franchise cornerstone DeMar DeRozan for pending free agent Kawhi Leonard in 2018.<\/p>\n

Less than a year later, the Raptors were champions for the first time in their history, and the culture of Canadian sports was changed<\/a>. Mavericks fans are hoping Ujiri can perform a similar transformation in Dallas.<\/p>\n

Fifteen months after trading cherished superstar Luka Don\u010di\u0107 to the Los Angeles Lakers in one of the most unpopular deals in sports history, the Mavericks are ready to move on. The team lucked into the No 1 pick in the 2025 draft and selected this season\u2019s Rookie of the Year winner, Cooper Flagg, but they still finished well short of the playoffs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a healing process,\u201d Ujiri said about Mavericks fans\u2019 grief in the post-Don\u010di\u0107 era. \u201cLuka is a future Hall of Famer, and that\u2019s the past. In Africa, we say when kings go, kings come. The king went, and we have a little prince here [in Flagg] that we\u2019re going to turn into a king.\u201d<\/p>\n

Few talent evaluators are better equipped than Ujiri to surround Flagg with the pieces he needs to be successful. The Mavericks have the ninth, 30th and 48th pick in this year\u2019s draft to try to hit on an OG Anunoby or Pascal Siakam, who both helped to win the Raptors their title after being drafted by Ujiri. Few team builders have a better track record of taking a hopeless organization from the bottom of the NBA to the top, building a championship contender capable of taking down juggernauts<\/a>; and nobody is better suited than Ujiri to pull the Mavericks out of the deep financial and cultural hole they dug for themselves in the wake of the Don\u010di\u0107 trade<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So, why does Ujiri in Dallas feel so wrong?<\/p>\n

As much as Ujiri has helped change basketball over the last two decades, he has never allowed the sport to define him. In 2003, while working as an unpaid NBA team scout,<\/a> Ujiri co-founded the non-profit Giants of Africa, which supplies thousands of young boys and girls throughout the continent with basketball camps and 100 community courts<\/a>. \u201cSport doesn\u2019t just unite people,\u201d Ujiri has said<\/a>. \u201cIt breaks down barriers, builds hope and transforms entire communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ujiri\u2019s humanitarian efforts have been well recognized. He has charmed presidents<\/a> and prime ministers<\/a> while being named an Officer of the Order of Canada. Under Ujiri, the Raptors were at the forefront of many social issues, from female empowerment to anti-racism, famously branding the team bus with \u201cBlack Lives Matter\u201d after police killed George Floyd in May 2020. In an opinion piece<\/a> for the Globe and Mail that same year, Ujiri wrote: \u201cWe all came into this world the same way \u2013 as humans. No one is born to be racist and none of us sees colour at first. I believe there are far more good people than bad people, but sometimes the good must do more than simply be good. They must overwhelm the bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s safe to say the people signing Ujiri\u2019s new cheques may not be as interested in social justice. In 2023, the Mavericks\u2019 majority owner, Miriam Adelson, wrote an op-ed claiming that pro-Palestinian and Black Lives Matter activists<\/a> are \u201cnot our critics. They are our enemies \u2026 And, as such, they should be dead to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adelson has been called the most dangerous owner in professional sports<\/a>. The widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, she has amassed her fortune primarily from owning the Las Vegas Sands casino and resort company. In late 2023, Miriam Adelson purchased majority ownership of the Dallas Mavericks from Mark Cuban for $3.5bn<\/a> \u2013 a drop in the ocean for the fifth richest woman in America, whose wealth is estimated to be around $35bn<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Adelson is also a Donald Trump mega-donor, the most generous of any sports team owner<\/a> by some margin. (No individuals donated more money to Trump\u2019s campaign efforts in 2020. In 2024, Adelson gave more than $100m to Trump.) She is also involved in politics outside the US. Adelson helped Benjamin Netanyahu<\/a> secure the most right-wing government in Israel\u2019s history, although the relationship has since soured<\/a>, before influencing Trump\u2019s Middle East policy<\/a>. She and Sheldon were influential in the United States moving its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2018, the same year Trump awarded her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Trump and Netanyahu have gone on to cause havoc across the Middle East: Israel\u2019s military actions in Gaza have been widely described as genocide<\/a>, while the US has started a war with Iran that has killed hundreds of people.<\/p>\n

Ujiri has always been outspoken,<\/a> albeit with completely different politics from Adelson. In 2018, after Trump referred to Haiti and some African nations as \u201cshithole countries\u201d, Ujiri criticized the US president.<\/a> \u201cWe have to inspire people and give them a sense of hope,\u201d he said. \u201cWe need to bring people along, not ridicule and tear them down. This cannot be the message that we accept from the leader of the free world.\u201d He later added<\/a> that if the Raptors won a championship, \u201cI think we\u2019ll be fine with [only visiting Canadian prime minister Justin] Trudeau.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Toronto, Ujiri was shielded by former Raptors governor Larry Tanenbaum, a staunch liberal<\/a>. Plus, there was a border separating Canada and the United States, who still had a good relationship at the time. Now that he is in a state as red as Texas \u2013 in charge of a team as prominent as the Mavericks \u2013 there is little protection, even if the team\u2019s fanbase skews Democrat<\/a>. At the same time, there\u2019s a huge platform for someone as ambitious and politically outspoken as Ujiri to discuss important issues. One has to wonder if he will decide to. After all, other members of the Mavericks have gone quiet after moving to Dallas.<\/p>\n

Kyrie Irving was once a walking headline. While his views were often far more dismal than Ujiri\u2019s \u2013 he promoted an antisemitic film<\/a> and very publicly refused to take the Covid-19 vaccine<\/a> \u2013 he was once adamant that speaking out on issues important to him was more pressing than his NBA career.<\/p>\n

\u201cBasketball is just not the most important thing to me right now \u2026 All my people are still in bondage all across the world, and there\u2019s a lot of dehumanization going on \u2026 It\u2019s not just in Palestine, not just in Israel. It\u2019s all over the world, and I feel it,\u201d he said in 2021<\/a>. But ever since he was traded from Brooklyn to Dallas in 2023, Irving has gone largely quiet \u2013 although he has recently shown his support for Palestine<\/a> \u2013 while he works for a woman who is a staunch supporter of Israel.<\/p>\n

\u201cKyrie Irving, even as he focuses on basketball, has liked lots of tweets in support of ending genocide in Gaza. And Mark Cuban has also long been on the record as a huge anti-Trump critic,\u201d Pablo Torre said <\/a>in a podcast episode dedicated to Adelson. \u201cBut ever since Cuban sold Adelson the team \u2026 Everybody that I\u2019ve mentioned has pretty much all shut up and dribbled, mainstreaming the image of Miriam Adelson and partying with her courtside, laundering her extremism to the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say Ujiri will do the same, and Irving\u2019s actions are proof that Adelson has not outlawed subtle shows of support for causes she does not agree with. Ujiri has the opportunity to make the world a better place from inside the Mavericks, standing on his morals by using his new and improved platform to change the organization \u2013 and perhaps the US \u2013 for the better. History, of course, is against him. That never stopped Ujiri before.<\/p>\n