{"id":692842,"date":"2026-04-01T23:35:45","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T23:35:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/692842\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T23:35:45","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T23:35:45","slug":"masai-ujiri-joins-toronto-tempo-ownership-group-as-principal-owner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/692842\/","title":{"rendered":"Masai Ujiri Joins Toronto Tempo Ownership Group as Principal Owner"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just over a month before tipoff, the Toronto Tempo announced that former <a href=\"https:\/\/tempo.wnba.com\/news\/masai-ujiri-joins-toronto-tempo-ownership-group\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Raptors president Masai Ujiri<\/a> has joined the 2026 WNBA expansion team&#8217;s ownership group as a principal owner.<\/p>\n<p>Ujiri led Toronto&#8217;s NBA franchise to its only championship in 2019 before departing last summer to focus on his basketball nonprofit, <a href=\"https:\/\/giantsofafrica.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Giants of Africa<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I believe deeply in the vision behind the Tempo: creating female leaders, elevating women not just on the court, but across the organization, and building championship culture from day one,&#8221; Ujiri said in a team statement.<\/p>\n<p>As part of his duties with Toronto Tempo, Ujiri will spearhead <a href=\"https:\/\/tempoimpact.ca\/tempo-rising\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Tempo Rising<\/a>, a global coaching mentorship program designed to support emerging women-identifying and non-binary coaches. The initiative aims to shape the future of basketball by developing coaching talent in communities worldwide.<\/p>\n<p>The announcement comes as the <a href=\"https:\/\/justwomenssports.com\/reads\/wnba-announces-2026-expansion-draft-details-for-portland-fire-toronto-tempo\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">2026 expansion franchise<\/a> prepares for its inaugural season. Toronto joins the league alongside the Portland Fire as the WNBA&#8217;s 15th team. <\/p>\n<p>Ujiri joins an ownership group that already includes other notable figures from the sports and entertainment world. YouTube creator and actress Lilly Singh became a minority owner in May 2025, before Quebec sports icons Geoff Molson and France Margaret B\u00e9langer invested last September.<\/p>\n<p>The franchise hired <a href=\"https:\/\/justwomenssports.com\/reads\/wnba-expansion-team-toronto-tempo-names-monica-wright-rogers-first-general-manager\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Monica Wright Rogers<\/a> as general manager in February 2025. In January 2026, the team subsequently added Ciara Carl and Brian Lankton as assistant coaches.<\/p>\n<p>The Tempo tips off its debut WNBA season this May inside Toronto&#8217;s Scotiabank Arena.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just over a month before tipoff, the Toronto Tempo announced that former Raptors president Masai Ujiri has joined&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":692843,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3770],"tags":[87389,7,6833,6,681,680,476,44728,3820,458,18081],"class_list":{"0":"post-692842","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto-raptors","8":"tag-2026-wnba-season","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-masai-ujiri","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-raptors","13":"tag-toronto","14":"tag-toronto-raptors","15":"tag-toronto-tempo","16":"tag-torontoraptors","17":"tag-wnba","18":"tag-wnba-expansion"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116332078323532886","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/692843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}