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UPDATE: Earlier on Friday, Adrian Wojnarowski broke the news that the Nuggets had granted Tim Leiweke and MLSE permission to meet with Masai Ujiri about Toronto’s vacant General Manager position (you can find my reaction to that initial report in the original post below the asterisks). Late Friday night, Woj reported that “Ujiri will take the next couple days to fully consider the move,” but that the Raptors’ multi-year contract offer will likely lead to the reigning Executive of the Year’s departure from Denver.

Digging even deeper, Wojnarowski writes that the Kroenke family “doesn’t appear moved to make a competitive bid to hold onto him” and that citing a league source familiar with the talks, “Denver ownership ‘seems to be moving on.’”

As I had mentioned earlier on Friday, once the Nuggets granted the Raps permission to negotiate with Ujiri, the only real hurdle between MLSE and their coveted target was cleared. Based on these latest updates via Yahoo! Sports, I’d be surprised if there isn’t a reported deal in place by the time we wake up Monday morning, if not sooner.

I suppose nothing is really done until it’s done (as Raptors fans have learned in the past), but still, you’d have to assume that part of the reason the Kroenkes even allowed the Raptors to speak with Ujiri and part of the reason they don’t sound too eager to get into a bidding war for his services, is that he probably let them know he was interested in the Toronto job. I’m aware that Stan Kroenke has a reputation for undervaluing his front office staff, but in this case, would you want to start throwing massive sums of money around for a guy who may have admitted he now wants to be elsewhere?

On a final note, an interesting couple of quotes on the situation from Josh Kroenke in The Denver Post: First, while everyone knows by now that Ujiri’s contract expires on June 30, Kroenke told The Post that the Raptors position opened up as he and Ujiri were finalizing the details on a multi-million dollar, multi-year deal that had been agreed to in principle.

Here are two quotes from Kroenke in that aforementioned Denver Post story…

“In my mind, we had an agreement but it doesn’t matter because I would never hold someone back from an opportunity they might be curious about. Especially someone I hold in such high regard as Masai.”

“If it was any other team, I wouldn’t even have thought about granting permission to speak to him.”

(Again, you can read my thoughts on the original Friday afternoon report and some thoughts on the GM search in general below)

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The French Open has always held a sacred place in this tennis fan’s heart. Parisians aren’t like you or I. Fact is, they’re better. Whether it’s smoking cigarettes in the stands or vociferously booing players for no discernible reason, they do things their own way. Refined jerks add so much more to the sporting landscape with their hooting and demonstrative sighing than the casual fan. The game – nay, the world – would be worse off without them.

Here’s looking at you, Satan.

We head into the second major of the year with less questions to answer than expected. Rafael Nadal’s knees have withstood the rigors of the European clay court season. Serena Williams dispatched Victoria Azarenka with ease in Rome, proving the only person who stands a chance of stopping Serena from winning her second French Open title is Serena herself. The favorites have made an impressive case, one so strong that seeing someone other than Nadal and Williams leave Roland Garros with a garish trophy and fat check in hand will be quite surprising.

It’s the ‘others’ that will intrigue in Paris. The others being the group of players that have a shot – however fleeting – at knocking off the overwhelming favorites. On the men’s side three names come to mind, all with their own personal demons when it comes to taking down Rafa on clay, let alone at a major. Roger Federer will need divine intervention to win it all, and no, Robin Soderling is not walking through that door. Novak Djokovic is the only hope for the anti Rafa crowd and he’s coming off an uncharacteristic loss to Tomas Berdych. The Czech big man could be this year’s Soderling. Unfortunately the words ‘could be ‘ have been synonymous with Berdych’s career up until this point.

On the women’s side there is slightly more belief. Serena bowed out in the first round last year, losing to Virginie Razzano in one of the biggest upsets in French Open history. Azarenka will be there at the end, as will Maria Sharapova. Unfortunately for those two their head-to-head numbers against Williams are terrible (4-25 combined).

Two weeks in Paris awaits.

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The transfer that has been rumored to go down for some time looks to be nearing its completion tonight. Various reports indicate Brazilian club Santos are going to accept Barcelona’s €25-30 million bid for burgeoning superstar Neymar. These are reports as of this moment, but enough people in the know seem to believe this is going down. It is believed Neymar and his family are discussing the personal terms of his contract with the Catalan giants.