The trade deadline came and went on Thursday with the Pistons making a pair of minor moves. They remain a middling team in the East -- not good enough to seriously contend, not bad enough to have a real chance at an elite player in the draft like Zion Williamson.
Stefanski explained the organization's approach in an interview with the Jamie and Stoney Show on 97.1 The Ticket.
"I hear you with Zion, I understand how exciting that young man is. But from Tom Gores down, our task is to play every night and to compete and to try to win. So that’s how we’re going to do it," Stefanski said. "I hear the argument (of tanking). I’ve been on different sides of listening to it on different teams. I feel good that even if we make the playoffs, with (director of player personnel) Gregg Polisnky, who I brought in from the Nets who was with me years ago, and myself, I think we have good eyes to find players. I’m very confident about that.
Detroit is 24-29 and 1.5 games out of the last playoff spot in the East.
Asked specifically about the long-term gain of a likely first-round playoff exit this season versus securing a top pick in the draft, Stefanski reiterated, "We’re competitive. We’re going to try to win. I really don’t defend -- when you try to win every game, that’s the makeup of this organization and that’s how we’re going to do it."
"I won’t talk about individual players, but we talked to every team. I really believe our front office with (assistant general managers) Sasha Guptin, Malik Rose, Pat Garrity, Andrew Loomis, they’ve been on the phone for weeks now and we talked to every team over and over. There were proposals back and forth with teams, but it takes two to make a deal, and these were the two deals we came up with," Stefanski said. "The larger deals, I’m not surprised, may not have had a chance because of our lack of cap flexibility."
"We had more opportunities to be a little bit of a seller," he said. "With our situation, there’s no secret, we are cap restricted. We don’t have much wiggle room to make deals with cap space, so we have to make little moves on the side here, which I think we did. But we got these moves where we got players that we think are good prospects, with rookie contracts, which is huge for us."
Excluding Henry Ellenson, whose option the Pistons won't pick up this summer, Detroit now has five players on rookie contracts in Mykhailiuk, Maker, Bruce Brown, Khyri Thomas and Luke Kennard. That's the young nucleus Stefanski is talking about.
"We got some young guys under manageable contracts, and now we have to play. We’re still trying to make the playoffs," Stefanski said. "There’s no question about that."