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Masai Ujiri's Assessment: What does the GM think about the future of the Raptors?

After an historic run by his team, here's what GM Masai Ujiri had to say about the Raptors going forward.

By Daniel Reynolds
Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports

Five of the key Raptors players spoke on Saturday after the team was eliminated from the post-season by the Cleveland Cavaliers. Coach Dwane Casey also weighed in. But today was the main event: General Manager Masai Ujiri would answer questions and deliver, essentially, his state of the Raptors union address.

Here are some of the things he said, and the takeaway from each.

First up, Masai reflects on the team's two key free agents, DeMar DeRozan and Bismack Biyombo:

Nothing too surprising here. It's long be believed the Raptors would re-sign DeRozan to some sort of max or close to max deal. DeMar wants to come back, and while you can question his value versus some other max players, he's definitely a valuable guy to have on your team for 82 games a year.

Biyombo is another question and it still feels like that's anyone's guess. It seems insane though to offer Biz more money than Valanciunas, and if he can get that elsewhere, well, that'll be that.

It's also important to note here that Masai is willing to go in the tax. Of course, this is complicated because of the Raptors' lack of ownership over Biyombo's Bird Rights, but still: encouraging in general.

But how about a deal for Dwane Casey? An update:

My opinion: This is a good idea. Don't @ me. (Actually, you can @ me and we can fight on Twitter. Let's do it.)

So, moving forward, what kind of things are the Raptors looking to do with, say, their draft picks? And does Masai have any idea as to the team's overall deficiencies?

Again, not a particularly surprising take here. The Raptors were thin at power forward -- having to stretch Patrick Patterson's minutes as far as they'd go, and playing DeMarre Carroll there for stretches. Luis Scola is definitely gone, as are James Johnson and Jason Thompson. So now you're looking at a serious lineup hole there.

Not shocking as well that the team would consider moving its draft picks. They've already got four young guys on the team who may or may not be able to contribute next season. To that end, Masai had some things to say about the Raptors' young players

On Norman Powell:

On Bruno Caboclo:

And, while he's not one of the four "young" guys on the roster, Masai is big on Jonas Valanciunas:

Finally, when asked about where the team is on the whole, Masai was upfront:

All in all on those last two statements, it's hard to argue with Masai's assessment. The Raptors are not quite a championship-calibre team, but they are headed in the right direction. And of course, there are more East teams now looming as potential threats to the Raptors' position.

And on the fans:

So, put that feather in your cap, Toronto.

A quick summary:

- The Raptors want to sign DeRozan and presumably Biyombo, but it sounds like the latter one may be difficult to do.

- The Raptors are all-in on Dwane Casey for the near future.

- Masai is open to moving the draft picks at numbers 9 and 27 because he's not sure the team can take on more young players.

- Masai acknowledges a need at power forward and back-up small forward.

- Jonas will have a bigger role, Bruno is growing but still needs time, and Norm has the hunger.

Now let's argue about all of this logic in the comments.

UPDATE: You can now watch the whole thing here.

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