Lee Jenkins, a prolific feature writer at Sports Illustrated, is leaving the magazine for a front-office position with the Los Angeles Clippers. The title of the new job is a new one for the NBA: executive director of research and identity.
Jenkins, 41, will join a front office in Los Angeles led by Lawrence Frank, the team’s president of basketball operations. With a Rolodex as deep as any NBA reporter, Jenkins will hope to leverage his connections and media experience in the new role.
“I’m going to try and take what I’ve done for the last 11 years, which is put together profiles of athletes to explain a little bit more about who they are,” Jenkins said Tuesday on ESPN NBA reporter Adrian Wojnarowski’s podcast. “The goal of every story I write is to tell the reader a little bit more about who the person is they’re watching play. I’ve always believed you can do that for a team.”
Indeed, NBA teams are telling stories every day — whether it’s trying to stand out in a crowded entertainment market, like Los Angeles, or wooing big name free agents.
A San Diego native who grew up a Clippers fan, Jenkins has been at Sports Illustrated for 11 years, including covering the NBA for the last eight. He made a name for himself profiling the league’s biggest stars, from Kawhi Leonard to LeBron James. When James announced he was leaving the Miami Heat to return to the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2014, he did so with a first-person piece, as told to Jenkins, on Sports Illustrated’s website.
Jenkins said the Clippers approached him about the job at the end of last season and he billed it as an opportunity to better understand the league he has covered for so many years – to go from fly on the wall to active participant in NBA business.
“When you do what I do, when you ask all these questions. . . . I think I get close, but I never really know,” he told Wojnarowski. “I hate being in these positions where I’m writing a story or I’m on a podcast or I’m on a TV show and I feel like I don’t fully know what I’m talking about. This is an opportunity to know what I’m talking about.”
Jenkins is not the first journalist to go from Sports Illustrated to a job in sports. Luke Winn, a former Sports Illustrated writer who covered college basketball, is now the director of prospect strategy for the Toronto Raptors. Thayer Evans, once a college football writer, is director of coaching at a sports agency.
There are numerous examples of analytics reporters jumping from journalism to teams in multiple sports. Chris Snow, director of hockey analytics for the Calgary Flames, previously covered Major League Baseball and the NHL. John Hollinger, who works in basketball operations for the Memphis Grizzlies, worked for ESPN. Several Baseball Prospectus writers have joined MLB front offices.
Jenkins’ move comes as Meredith Corporation, which owns Sports Illustrated, is seeking a buyer for the magazine. Meredith bought Time Inc. last year and announced plans to sell titles like Time Magazine, Fortune and Sports Illustrated. This week, Salesforce founder Marc Benioff announced he was buying Time for $190 million.
During the podcast, Wojnarowski asked Jenkins whether what he learns in his new job could potentially serve him well if he ever decided to return to media. “For sure,” Jenkins said. “We all have to expand in this business that is constantly changing.”
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