She The North: Ujiri says hiring of women is working for Raptors
TORONTO — Masai Ujiri has asked the question likely dozens of times, of every young camper at every summertime Giants of Africa camp. Have you ever met someone who didn’t come from a woman?
“There’s not a person in this world that I’ve seen that didn’t come from a woman. There’s nobody,” Ujiri said. “There’s not one person in this world that did not come from a woman.”
Ujiri makes the point to teach his camp attendees about respecting women, and it was a story the Toronto Raptors president repeated again this week at an evening celebration of women in Raptors’ leadership positions.
The Raptors hired women for several key roles this past off-season, and the 47-year-old Ujiri summed it up matter-of-factly on a recent Bill Simmons podcast when he said “Hire women.” But if the makeup of Toronto’s NBA franchise is more female than most, it happened organically rather than by design, Ujiri stressed.