In June 2019, the Toronto Raptors won their first NBA championship. The man who built the team was born in Nigeria and grew up in Zaria, playing football before he discovered basketball.
Masai Ujiri was born in 1970 in the United Kingdom to a Nigerian father and a Kenyan mother, and raised in Zaria, in northern Nigeria. His mother was a doctor, his father a hospital administrator. He started playing basketball as a teenager and dreamed of the NBA.
Playing career
Ujiri went to the United States to play college basketball, then played professionally in Europe. He was not good enough to reach the NBA as a player, so he turned to scouting.
The executive
He began as an unpaid scout, then worked for the Orlando Magic, the Denver Nuggets and the Toronto Raptors. In 2013, as general manager of the Nuggets, he was named NBA Executive of the Year, the first African to win the award. He then returned to Toronto as general manager and later president.
The championship
Ujiri built the Raptors through bold moves, including trading for Kawhi Leonard in 2018. The gamble paid off. With Leonard, Kyle Lowry and Pascal Siakam, the Cameroonian forward Ujiri had drafted, Toronto beat the Golden State Warriors in the 2019 NBA Finals.
Giants of Africa
In 2003, Ujiri founded Giants of Africa, a foundation that runs basketball camps across the continent, using the sport to teach leadership and life skills. It has built dozens of basketball courts in African countries.
Basketball Africa League
Ujiri was a strong supporter of the Basketball Africa League, launched by the NBA and FIBA in 2021, and he has pushed for investment in African basketball and infrastructure.
An incident
After the 2019 Finals, a police officer shoved Ujiri as he tried to reach the court to celebrate. Video footage later cleared him, and he spoke about the incident as an example of racial profiling.
Leaving Toronto
In 2025, Ujiri’s long tenure as Raptors president came to an end.
Legacy
Ujiri is one of the most powerful Africans in American sport. He often says that talent is everywhere in Africa but opportunity is not.
He never made the NBA as a player. He built a champion instead, and courts across Africa where the next Siakam may be practising.
