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Masai Ujiri Speaks With Media Leading Up To Draft Day

Holly MacKenzie - Raptors.com

With 48 hours to go until the draft, Toronto’s front office is listing and ranking, and narrowing down its pool of prospects. Following a two-man session that saw Ivica Zubac (Croatia) and Diamond Stone (Maryland) face off against one another, Stone for his second workout with the Raptors, general manager Masai Ujiri addressed the media.

“It’s an interesting draft,” Ujiri said. “We’ve worked out quite a few guys and we like it. We like [having the] nine [pick]. My [front office] guys are all over the place [with their rankings]. I call it ‘All over the place Monday’, that was yesterday.”

Ujiri joked that Tuesday would be referred to as “Have all options on the board Tuesday” as he and his team sift through names and rankings, working to get their draft board ready for Thursday night.

With two picks in the first round (No. 9 and No. 27), the range of players the team has had to look at made for an interesting pre-draft preparation. Part of what makes the night so exciting is the element of the unknown. Preparing for the unexpected becomes as important as going in with a concrete game plan.

“Part of our jobs is to predict,” Ujiri said. “You have to think fast in this business and operate fast sometimes. And sometimes, you have to have patience.”

Despite the challenge of not knowing what’s going to happen as the night unfolds, Ujiri likes knowing that when you own picks, you also have options. Depending on what happens with the picks preceding Toronto’s selections, the prioritization of those options can change.

“To me it’s not difficult because you continue to narrow and narrow [down your list] and if you have a bunch of guys [you like], you can look at different options,” he said. “You can look at trading the pick, you can look at drafting a guy that doesn’t come right away, you can look at a player you can draft and develop slowly.”

Stone and Zubac were both excited to be days away from accomplishing a childhood dream. Zubac said he has been waiting for this moment since he was 11 years old. Stone said Tuesday’s workout was his best and he felt he’d gotten to show the organization his full skill set. Having been in to workout for Toronto before, Stone also had high praise for head coach Dwane Casey.

“He’s a great coach,” Stone said. “He’s a really, really good man and person, too. I can see him changing me into a better person, on and off the court.”

As players close out the days before the draft hoping they’ve shown enough in their workouts to get their names called on Thursday, teams are pulling late nights and early mornings as they discuss rankings as well as the potential fit of prospects. It isn’t often that a team coming off a franchise-best season that ended in the Eastern Conference Finals also has a lottery pick. Ujiri says they are blessed to have the pick and that the team will “operate in the best way for the organization.”

"There's no pressure, to me,” Ujiri said. “I can never feel pressure because of a pick. We can't feel that way. We're just lucky to have it. You jump on that opportunity. I tell my guys, it better work out. That's the pressure. This is how I grew up in the league. There's so much pride in it. It's how my guys grew up, whether it's the [Dan] Tolzmans or [Jeff] Weltmans. It's such an exciting time for us. We don't look at it as pressure at all. We look at it as get it right."

One could assume the excitement of the draft would pale in comparison to reaching the conference finals. This assumption would be wrong.

“This is (the most fun), to be honest,” Ujiri said. “This and the camps in August are my best times of the year. You just enjoy. It's different this year because we played so far. Now you gear up. Whether it's drafting or player development, the ultimate is putting a team together.”