Masai Ujiri, the first African to run a major professional sports franchise in the United States, has built his reputation on humanitarian work and social justice advocacy that could hardly contrast more sharply with the political record of the woman who now signs his pay cheques. Ujiri co-founded the non-profit Giants of Africa in 2003, building basketball camps and community courts for thousands of young people across the continent, while the Dallas Mavericks’ majority owner, Miriam Adelson, has described Black Lives Matter and pro-Palestinian activists as “not our critics. They are our enemies … And, as such, they should be dead to us.”
Ujiri’s basketball credentials are unmatched. After becoming the first African to run a major US sports franchise as general manager of the Denver Nuggets in 2010, he won Executive of the Year in 2013 before moving to Toronto. There he inherited a Raptors franchise unsure of itself—the only NBA team outside the United States, centred in a city that had not won a championship since 1993. Ujiri built one of the deepest and most international teams in the league, hitting on draft picks before swapping franchise cornerstone DeMar DeRozan for pending free agent Kawhi Leonard in 2018. Less than a year later the Raptors were champions for the first time in their history.
“It’s almost like a match made in heaven,” Ujiri said after being introduced as the Mavericks’ president of basketball operations and alternate governor last week. “Every single one of us in this world is chosen for something special, and we just have to find it. And I found basketball.”
The Mavericks are in desperate need of his touch. Fifteen months after trading cherished superstar Luka Dončić to the Los Angeles Lakers—one of the most unpopular deals in sports history—the team lucked into the No. 1 pick in the 2025 draft and selected this season’s Rookie of the Year, Cooper Flagg, yet still finished well short of the playoffs. Ujiri acknowledged the fan grief with a characteristically philosophical remark: “In Africa, we say when kings go, kings come. The king went, and we have a little prince here [in Flagg] that we’re going to turn into a king.” Few talent evaluators are better equipped to surround Flagg with the pieces needed for success; the Mavericks hold the ninth, 30th and 48th picks in this year’s draft, hoping to repeat the kind of draft hits—OG Anunoby, Pascal Siakam—that helped win Toronto its title.
But Ujiri has never allowed basketball to define him. While working as an unpaid NBA scout in 2003, he co-founded Giants of Africa, which supplies basketball camps and 100 community courts for young boys and girls across the continent. “Sport doesn’t just unite people,” he has said. “It breaks down barriers, builds hope and transforms entire communities.” Under Ujiri the Raptors were at the forefront of social issues, from female empowerment to anti-racism, famously branding the team bus with “Black Lives Matter” after police killed George Floyd in May 2020. In an opinion piece for the Globe and Mail that year, Ujiri wrote: “We all came into this world the same way – 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.” His humanitarian efforts earned him recognition as an Officer of the Order of Canada.
The people signing Ujiri’s new cheques hold fundamentally different views. Miriam Adelson, the fifth richest woman in America with an estimated net worth of $35bn, purchased majority ownership of the Mavericks from Mark Cuban in December 2023 for $3.5bn. Her fortune comes primarily from the Las Vegas Sands casino and resort company, founded by her late husband Sheldon Adelson. She has been called the most dangerous owner in professional sports. Adelson is also a Donald Trump mega-donor—no individual donated more to Trump’s campaign efforts in 2020, and in 2024 she gave more than $100m to Trump. She and her late husband were instrumental in moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2018, the same year Trump awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She helped Benjamin Netanyahu secure the most right-wing government in Israel’s history, though the relationship has since soured. Sheldon Adelson, who died in 2021, and Miriam together donated more than $500m to Republican causes between 2010 and 2021. Miriam has also criticised Jewish individuals and groups who support Palestinian rights, viewing their activism as a path to assimilation.
In a 2023 op-ed, Adelson wrote that pro-Palestinian and Black Lives Matter activists “are not our critics. They are our enemies … And, as such, they should be dead to us.” That statement stands in direct opposition to Ujiri’s record of outspoken advocacy. In 2018, after Trump referred to Haiti and some African nations as “shithole countries”, Ujiri criticised the US president, saying: “We have to inspire people and give them a sense of hope. We 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.” He later added that if the Raptors won a championship, “I think we’ll be fine with [only visiting Canadian prime minister Justin] Trudeau.”
The ideological clash is further complicated by the Mavericks’ financial turmoil. A decision to abandon projected regional television revenue in favour of creating “Mavs TV” resulted in substantial losses. The team was projected to lose more than $100m in the season preceding Ujiri’s arrival, with further losses expected after the Dončić trade. Ticket price hikes amid declining fan morale have compounded the situation, with empty seats, protests and partial refunds offered to season-ticket holders. An NBA insider described the team’s financial situation as “the most dire that it’s been ever in franchise history”, citing potential luxury tax penalties and the constraints of the second apron rules. Some fans have called for a boycott until management prioritises basketball over financial strategies.
Kyrie Irving’s trajectory in Dallas illustrates what can happen when outspoken players join Adelson’s organisation. Irving was once a walking headline—promoting an antisemitic film, refusing the Covid-19 vaccine, and saying in 2021: “Basketball is just not the most important thing to me right now … All my people are still in bondage all across the world, and there’s a lot of dehumanization going on … It’s not just in Palestine, not just in Israel. It’s all over the world, and I feel it.” But ever since being traded from Brooklyn to Dallas in 2023, Irving has gone largely quiet—though he has recently shown support for Palestine. “Kyrie 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,” Pablo Torre said in a podcast episode dedicated to Adelson. “But ever since Cuban sold Adelson the team … Everybody that I’ve 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.” Mark Cuban, who bought the Mavericks for $285m in 2000 and sold his majority stake to Adelson, has described his political views as leaning towards libertarianism while being critical of Trump and supporting some Democratic candidates.
That is not to say Ujiri will follow the same path. Irving’s actions prove that Adelson has not outlawed subtle shows of support for causes she opposes. 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 organisation—and perhaps the US—for the better. History, of course, is against him. That never stopped Ujiri before.
