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“We’ve begun the process of seeking his replacement, and we look forward to the day when we assign that replacement the definitive story of how Lee Jenkins helped shape the NBA champion L.A. Clippers."

"In our line of work, we ask questions from different angles, assemble information in different ways. We try to put it together like puzzles, until we've formed a portrait of a person. I'm going to try to bring that same process to the Clippers in hopes it will complement what their incredible group of evaluators already accomplish. This team is interested not just in what players do but who they are -- how they're wired, how they're motivated -- and that's an area I love to explore.

"But I have to be honest with myself. This is all very new and there will be trial and error. All I know for sure is that the Clippers have the tools to build one of the great sports stories, and I'm excited to contribute."

"I grew up pulling for the Clippers on KTLA -- Gary Grant was my guy -- but it would be disingenuous to say that's why I'm doing this," Jenkins said. "I just think they're a great bet. So much about sports comes down to market and owner. They have the most attractive market in the league, and if they don't have the most committed owner, I don't know who does. I mean, who else but Steve Ballmer would do something like this? I'm constantly writing stories about teams that win, and when you trace their course back to the beginning, the end seems almost inevitable.

"The Clippers are in L.A. with Steve Ballmer and Jerry West, Doc Rivers and Lawrence Frank. They might have the best negotiator in the league in Michael Winger and two of the best evaluators in Trent Redden and Mark Hughes. They have a plan to create the ultimate environment for their players. I think it's inevitable."

Ranma wrote:
Pairing an intense competitor like CP3 with misguided athletes like Griffin and Jordan was what kept the team from realizing its full potential. Despite Chris Paul's attempt to build up camaraderie with the team, most of his teammates were unwilling to engage. This was part of Doc's monumental failure in handling the situation as head coach and designated leader of the team along with his ineptitude as GM in acquiring whatever personnel suited his fancy at any given fleeting moment.

"The Clippers are in L.A. with Steve Ballmer and Jerry West, Doc Rivers and Lawrence Frank. They might have the best negotiator in the league in Michael Winger and two of the best evaluators in Trent Redden and Mark Hughes. They have a plan to create the ultimate environment for their players. I think it's inevitable."

“There will be a significant amount of research into potential players,” Jenkins told the Los Angeles Times. “I think it’ll be a lot of work that complements what they already do in terms of their scouting and evaluation, which is an area I’m pretty interested in and I’ve always thought journalist could help with.

“I don’t know a thing about evaluating talent. I could never do that in a million years. What I try to do is evaluate people. It’s not evaluating necessarily a person’s character. It’s evaluating what motivates them, how they are wired, what kind of things they respond to, what kind of things they value. That might be an area where I can possibly contribute to the people they already have.”

On the podcast with Woj, Jenkins, who noted he’s not closing the door on going back to writing at some point, said part of the reason for the move was to learn through immersion. As a journalist, he had been able to get close to a subject or situation, but still felt like he never really knew what was going on behind the scenes. Now, he says, he feels like he will.

A few years ago, when I was still a journalism student at USC, Jenkins spoke at one of my classes. After the class, I followed up with a phone call to get his advice. Two of the notes Jenkins gave me that I remembered in particular were that “limited access forces you to see subtle things,” and that stories are more successful when writers get out of their own way. With the Clippers, Jenkins will go behind the scenes even further while his public-facing persona recedes. He’s getting out of his own way and also getting more specific access than he’s ever had before. He just won’t be able to tell us about it anymore.

Clemenza wrote:All we need now is a top of the line hypnotist, an interior decorator, and Salt Bae to have the best front office in the world!

Unofficial: valet for Jerry West.

Two years ago Michael Lewis gave an interview to Business Insider in which he suggested that professional sports teams should revolutionize the role of scouts. The job of the modern scout, he said, was to do more than figure out how fast a pitcher throws or how high a linebacker jumps; their job was part psychologist and part detective. They should find out how a player gets along with teammates, for example, and how they handle being away from home.

“What you should do is basically hire a bunch of young journalists to go figure out who these people are,” Lewis said.

Lawrence Frank, the president of basketball operations for the Los Angeles Clippers, read the interview. He took Lewis’s advice.

The Clippers hired Lee Jenkins for what he did best at Sports Illustrated: Profile athletes

Jenkins will be intimately involved with player evaluation — both free agents and draft prospects. The idea, Jenkins explained, is that in the modern NBA the decision-making process for personnel is both collaborative and diverse. The Clippers, for example, have former basketball players to judge talent and an astrophysicist to crunch numbers already involved.

“The reality is someone who’s been in basketball versus a journalist will attack a problem from different perspectives,” Frank said. “If you want different thoughts and want to avoid an echo chamber and avoid group-think, you have to have people come from different perspectives.”

Ben Strauss, Washington Post