If there is one trait Masai Ujiri has shown above all others in his short career as the key decision-maker with an NBA franchise, it’s patience.

And after a rather protracted but not unusual period weighing job offers, the 42-year-old Nigerian-born Ujiri has given the Raptors what they want.

Ujiri, the NBA’s executive of the year with the Denver Nuggets, took a week to decide but formally agreed Friday to accept a lucrative Raptors offer to become the fifth general manager in the team’s 19-year history.

“I’m coming,” Ujiri said in a text message late Friday afternoon, ending speculation about whether or not he would take a Toronto offer for a five-year contract that some reports suggest will be worth nearly $15 million.

Ujiri, whose seminal moment as executive vice-president of basketball operations in Denver was waiting out the New York Knicks for weeks in a franchise-altering trade involving all-star Carmelo Anthony, replaces Bryan Colangelo at the top of the basketball chain with the Raptors.

But in a situation unprecedented in recent NBA history, Colangelo remains an integral figure with the Raptors, serving as team president while ceding control of ultimate basketball decisions to a man he once hired as director of global scouting.

Ujiri has long held that Colangelo and Raptors senior adviser Wayne Embry were mentors and both are still involved in the organization to act as sounding boards if Ujiri wants.

He takes over a Toronto team that has seen incremental improvement over each of the last three seasons, but one that has not been in the NBA playoffs in five springs.

The roster seems set and there is not much financial wiggle room under the NBA’s arcane salary cap rules, by Ujiri has carte blanche from incoming Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment chief executive officer Tim Leiweke to make whatever changes he wants, small or large.

“It will be my GM, and I will have his back,” Leiweke said earlier about the GM he’d hire to replace Colangelo.

Colangelo, in the three years Ujiri worked in Toronto, lauded him for his independent thinking.

“When I hired Masai, I realized quickly he was very good at developing relationships and also exceptional at sizing up talent,” Colangelo said in a December, 2012 interview with The Star. “He was also very confident in his opinions on players and people and not afraid to express an opinion either.”

There are several immediate decisions Ujiri will have to make.

Head coach Dwane Casey has one year left on his contract, but none of his assistant coaches have deals past the end of June.

Executive vice-president Ed Stefanski and Marc Eversley, the team’s vice-president of college scouting, are holdovers from the Colangelo regime.

The roster, while set in many ways, will need some altering at the very least and Ujiri will have to decide how, or if, he’ll shop any of the team’s core players.

Toronto has no picks in the June 27 NBA draft, having traded them away, but there may be a way to deal in.

There are salary cap issues. The best the Raptors can likely do is get under the tax threshold enough to have the so-called “mid-level” exception to offer free agents. Ujiri found ways in his two years in Denver to make stark changes to the roster, but only after careful consideration and deliberation. The Anthony trade dragged on for weeks, but he extracted a package that propelled the Nuggets to an franchise record 57 wins last season, and he was able to wait and get involved in a four-team mega-deal that landed Andre Iguodala at little cost.

Ujiri becomes the fifth full-time GM in the 19-year history of the Raptors, following Isiah Thomas, Glen Grunwald, Rob Babcock and Colangelo. Wayne Embry, who Ujiri has called one of his mentors, was interim GM between Babcock and Colangelo and remains a senior adviser.

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