Nav Bhatia and the late Penny Marshall were both honored at the Basketball Hall of Fame in the superfan gallery.

Bhatia, a Toronto-area businessman who immigrated to Canada in 1984, has attended almost every Raptors home game during the team's existence.

"You are a super fan. I want to say thank you for being who you are and thank you for being a part of the Hall of Fame. And I want to congratulate you for for all of that," said Hall of Fame chairman Jerry Colangelo to Bhatia. 

Bhatia paid tribute to Raptors fans in accepting the honor.

"Me being in the presence of such great basketball talent in the world right here, this is so unreal ... I'm still in shock and that's why I'm accepting this on behalf of not just the Toronto fans, Raptors fans, but all the fans, basketball fans and the NBA fans all over the world. 

The Toronto Raptors won their 15th straight game after their 137-126 victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves.

The win spoiled D'Angelo Russell's Wolves debut.

"I think we're getting everybody's A-plus game. They were really good, I thought, for a lot of stretches. We just had to try to figure some things out," said Nick Nurse after the game. 

Nurse discussed his gameplan in slowing Russell down. 

"[We] really tried to press up on him, make him drive it. We sat back, sat down too much, and he's going to make those no matter where he is on those. We did try to trap him out of the timeouts a lot when we got the right matchups on him and we turned him over twice out of timeouts for layups, which was huge," said Nurse of defending Russell, who had 22 points.

Russell expressed his excitement over his Wolves debut despite the loss. 

"It was great. Super excited about this group. We know what Karl[-Anthony Towns] does and what he brings to the table. Just the group in general and coaching staff. I'm looking forward to this challenge to figure out what we can do to get better every day."

Ownership of the Toronto Raptors were emphatic that they were not going to allow Masai Ujiri to easily leave for the New York Knicks before his contract expires in the summer of 2021.

It is not known if Larry Tanenbaum appealed directly to James Dolan or to Adam Silver or both on that issue.

Multiple sources confirmed that Ujiri had viewed the Knicks as a viable destination depending on the timing. The Knicks instead will hire Leon Rose to run the franchise.

There have been some preliminary discussions between Ujiri and MLSE, but nothing has changed over the past month regarding his desire to wait until the summer of 2020 to address his contract status. Ujiri could even wait until 2021.

The New York Knicks have long had interest in Masai Ujiri, but James Dolan may currently find it too difficult of a scenario to make happen.

When the Knicks parted ways with Steve Mills, reports surfaced that Dolan had interest in hiring a player agent, which is a model the Warriors and Lakers have used in recent seasons.

"The sense I've gotten is as much as (Dolan has) coveted Masai Ujiri, the hurdles it would take to get there from draft compensation to Toronto letting him out of his contract to Masai wanting to do this, it seems he has lost his desire to go forward and chase that," said Adrian Wojnarowski on ESPN.

Ujiri is under contract through the 20-21 season with the Raptors. 

Masai Ujiri "intends to maneuver his way to the Knicks" according to "two people in the league whom (Marc Stein) trust[s] deeply for their reads on this situation."

The Knicks removed Steve Mills as president of the team on Tuesday.

One of the sources also said he believes Larry Tannenbaum of MLSE would ultimately allow Ujiri out of his contract.

Ujiri joined the Toronto Raptors in 2013 and helped lead them to a title in 2019. Ujiri's contract runs through the 20-21 season.

James Dolan is targeting Masai Ujiri to eventually run the New York Knicks.

Dolan fired longtime executive Steve Mills on Tuesday.

Dolan has long been interested in hiring Ujiri. Ujiri is under contract with the Toronto Raptors through the 20-21 season. The Knicks are reluctant to part with draft compensation to the Raptors for Ujiri, which would be a requirement for him to be let out of his contract.

Scott Perry will run the Knicks' basketball operations for the foreseeable future. 

Nick Nurse and Taylor Jenkins have been named the NBA's Coaches of the Month for January.

The Toronto Raptors had a record of 12-3 in January.

The Memphis Grizzlies had an 11-4 record for the month.

Norman Powell is out indefinitely due to a fractured finger.

The fracture is in the ring finger of his non-shooting hand, according to Blake Murphy of The Athletic.

Powell is averaging 15.3 points and 3.9 rebounds per game this season.