He who built it sometimes cannot watch as it all unfolds.

Masai Ujiri, the architect behind the most successful team in Toronto Raptors history, finds it difficult for a variety of reasons to watch his team play in person.

Sometimes he is at home, sometimes he’s in his office in the tower next to the Air Canada Centre, sometimes he’s tucked away in an anteroom just off the team’s locker room.

It’s not that the intensity is too much, the moment too great, the urge to scream and coach and get all worked up too hard to overcome. It’s just how the team’s president and general manager is wired.

“If I’m watching, I’d rather watch in my own space,” Ujiri said Saturday morning before the Raptors faced the Cleveland Cavaliers in Game 3 of the NBA Eastern Conference final. “I do absolutely enjoy it but there’s something about my mechanism, the way I am.”

Ujiri’s vantage point for any game varies depending on the moment, his mood and his schedule.

He’ll watch parts of some games with the team’s video co-ordinator Jon Goodwillie stuck in a tiny office by the locker room; if he’s home, he might stay there for a half; if he’s around the building, there are other places he can be.

He is not ever going to be in the tunnel leading to the court like Bryan Colangelo was; the cameras are not going to find him because he doesn’t want to be found.

“Sometimes I’m in my office, sometimes I leave,” he said. “It’s not nerve-wracking, sometimes I just don’t want to know. I watch but maybe later.”

For what is the biggest win in franchise history to date, he was busying himself with other work.

“Game 7, last series, I was in my office doing other things and, three minutes to go, Arsalan (Jamil, his assistant) came and got me and said, ‘You need to come see this,’” Ujiri said.

He did and was part of the post-game celebration because he should have been, given that he built the team that has advanced further than any Raptors team.

“You are so invested in it when it’s going on, this is everything you do and people deal with it in different ways,” Ujiri said. “I’ll come out just to see the atmosphere but other than that, everything is different

“Every game is different . . . I might decide to come at halftime, I might come for the beginning of the game and leave, I might see the whole game somewhere. I’ll just see how it goes.”

One of Ujiri’s traits is that he much prefers to stay in the background than be out front. He does the obligatory media sessions at key points in the season but he does take a background role when it’s time to focus on games.

He got stuck chatting with a huge throng of reporters Wednesday in Cleveland after Tuesday’s draft lottery but deftly deflected all questions about his team’s play and any possible changes in strategy or personnel.

“That’s coaching,” he said. “I see it like maybe a different way now. Now is the time for the players and the coaches, really. I don’t even know why I’m here.”

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

It is not just in the cauldron of the playoffs that Ujiri appreciates the solitude of watching games. And that makes for some interesting times around the house when he’s not at games.

“Even sometimes when we’re on the road, I’ll watch another game and then later I’ll watch ours,” he said. ”My wife will be watching it downstairs and sometimes I’ll hear a stamp on the ground or a scream or something when I’ll be watching something else, and I’ll watch it after.”

Read more about: