The Clippers Are Adding SI Writer Lee Jenkins To Their Braintrust

I’ll be honest, I’m not so sure what an Executive Director of Research and Identity is exactly, but Woj went on to explain Lee Jenkin’s new role with the Clippers as

The Clippers are banking on the belief that Jenkins, one of the industry’s preeminent sports journalists, can translate his talent, ethics and instincts as a storyteller and his unique study of people into the franchise’s ambitious basketball pursuits.

OK so I’m still a little confused. It sounds like they are just going to leverage Jenkin’s ability to learn about people and dig into what makes them who they are in their basketball evaluations? That’s kind of cool. Nowadays front offices across the league are looking for any slight advantage in the team building process, so if Ballmer and his team think this will give them a leg up, all the power to them. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a media personality make the jump to the front office in the NBA, most recently it happened with John Hollinger and the Memphis Grizzlies. You know Hollinger for his work at ESPN and basically creating PER, and if you didn’t know that, you for sure have used his stat metrics to get into a basketball argument online. Back in 2012 they pulled him away from ESPN and make him their VP of Basketball Operations. I’d say he’s been fairly successful, he has a handful of 50 win seasons, and unfortunately injuries have sort of plagued the Grizzlies in recent years, with last season being the first time they’ve missed the playoffs in seven years.

Now I don’t known if Jenkins role will be as hands on as Hollinger’s is, but there’s no doubt Lee Jenkins is an absolute legend in the sportswriting world. He was basically the only reason I still get SI delivered to my door. Anything big happens in the league, guys go to Lee Jenkins. He’s a phenomenal story teller, so I’ll definitely miss his basketball pieces, that’s for sure.

Hopefully this is a wake up call to 28 other NBA teams that at one point or another may be looking to add some depth to their basketball front offices. If we’re going to start including writers, why not also include bloggers? I feel like if you give me and Reags the reigns down in SAC or something, there’s no chance we end up worse than what currently exists. Personally for me, there’s only one franchise I’d give up blogging for, I think we all know who that is, but no longer do you have to be a former NBA/college player in order for teams to respect your basketball mind.

But also, there’s one little nugget I couldn’t ignore when it came to this story. Lee Jenkins is from San Diego. Why is that important? Well, I hear there is some big time NBA free agent that grew up in Southern California and just so happened to play this college basketball in San Diego. Who was that again? Oh right.

I see you Steve Ballmer, you sly dog you.