The Mavericks president made restoring joy to basketball in Dallas the priority at media day, putting the focus on rebuilding the connection between the team and its fans.
Masai Ujiri took the podium first on Friday for Dallas Mavs media day, ahead of coach Dusty May and every player who followed him. That order matters at media day. The first voice sets the tone for everything said afterward and the new team president Ujiri used his to lay out what this season needs to accomplish.
He did not talk about win totals or playoff seeding. He talked about the city.
"What I qualify as a successful season is bringing joy back to basketball in this city," Ujiri said. "Yeah, that would be success for us. And I know that's going to take winning. Yeah, but if we can bring joy back to basketball in this city, it's a huge success for us."
The word choice is the tell. Joy is not a word executives reach for and Ujiri did not arrive at it by accident.
Dallas spent the last year and a half as one of the least joyful places in the NBA. The Doncic trade did not just cost the franchise a superstar. It cost it the goodwill of people who had organized their winters around watching him, bought jerseys for their kids and believed this was a place where a generational player wanted to stay. Fans protested outside the arena. They chanted for the general manager to be fired. Some simply stopped showing up.
Whatever you think of the basketball logic, the emotional damage was real and it lingered. A 26-win season made it worse. By spring, the arena had the feel of a building people attended out of habit rather than anticipation.
That is the situation Ujiri inherited and it explains why he spent his opening remarks talking about community work rather than roster construction.
"We are trying to bring joy back to basketball in this city with this team and with Dusty, the coaching staff," Ujiri said. "They've been nothing but very engaging, participated with players and all the engagements that we've had all summer. Players have been around in the city, workouts, camps that they've done and places we've visited."
Showing up in neighborhoods and running camps will not fix a fractured relationship on its own. But it signals an understanding that a fan base that feels dismissed does not return simply because the standings improve.
Ujiri was also honest about the limits of a good offseason.
"I can't say enough of this. We've won every single game in the summer, but now the real stuff starts," Ujiri said.
He is right. The summer went about as well as it could have, with a rebuilt coaching staff, a younger roster and national praise for the direction. None of it matters in October.
There is also something practical buried in his framing. Setting a specific win target for this roster would be a trap. Kyrie Irving is 34 and returning from a torn ACL. Cooper Flagg is entering his second season. May has never coached an NBA game. Any number attached to that group is a guess and missing it would only feed the negativity Ujiri is trying to dispel.
What he defined instead is achievable regardless of the standings. A team that plays hard, develops its young cornerstone and gives people a reason to care again can restore something even in a year that ends outside the playoffs.
Flagg is the biggest reason to think it works. He gave Dallas its first genuinely exciting basketball since the trade and watching a 19-year-old drop 50 in a game was the closest thing to joy the building produced last season. A second-year leap from him alongside a healthy Irving would go further toward Ujiri's goal than any transaction could.
The season opens Oct. 21 in Houston. Ujiri set a bar his organization will be measured against and it is one this fan base will recognize immediately if it gets cleared.
