One of the announcements to come out of the introductory press conference for the 76ers new ownership group was that Ed Stefanski was officially out as the General Manager.
“Ed Stefanski will be leaving the organization,” Joshua Harris, who is heading up the new ownership group, announced today. “But he will have lots of other opportunities and we wish him nothing but the best.”
Doug Collins shared a similar sentiment about the man who hired him.
“I developed such a great relationship last year with Mr. Snider and with Eddie [Stefanski], and I’m losing two very important people in my life,” Collins said. “I think maybe you lose them business wise, but you never lose them as friends.”
“I’m incredibly thankful for Eddie to trust in me to be the coach,” Collins would go on to say.
The ownership group insisted that Rod Thorn will be the guy in charge of basketball operations, combining the responsibilities he previously shared with Stefanski.
“Rod [Thorn] is the captain of that ship. He will run that part of our organization,” Harris stated. “We are going to stay with Rod. There are no current plans to replace Ed.”
Thorn stressed the importance, and stability, of those around him.
"We'll have Tony [DiLeo] and Courtney [Witte] that worked very closely with Ed and I. They certainly are very competent and very willing and able to take on more [responsibility]. So all of us will do a little more."
Collins made it sound as if having two people in that roll may have been one too many.
“There was no butting heads or anything like that [in regards to Stefanski’s departure],” Collins said. “I think we sat down as an organization and I think they felt like they wanted to streamline things a little bit. I don’t think they wanted too many voices in the decision making end of things.”
Ed Stefanski was previously the President and General Manager of the 76ers, and was placed below Rod Thorn in the organizational depth chart when Thorn was hired last August. He is currently in the running for the GM position with the Toronto Raptors.