Clippers Hire Sports Illustrated Writer Lee Jenkins for Front Office Role

Ranma · Post #1 » by **Ranma** » Tue Sep 18, 2018 2:22 am

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MartinToVaught · Post #2 » by **MartinToVaught** » Tue Sep 18, 2018 2:25 am

This is a really intriguing hire. I've always liked Jenkins' articles.

Ranma · Post #3 » by **Ranma** » Tue Sep 18, 2018 2:28 am

Spoiler:

Ranma · Post #4 » by **Ranma** » Tue Sep 18, 2018 2:48 am

Sports Illustrated Staff, SI.com (9/17/18)

“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."

Lee Jenkins to Leave Sports Illustrated, Join Clippers Front Office

Wammy Giveaway · Post #5 » by **Wammy Giveaway** » Tue Sep 18, 2018 2:55 am

Clippers never had a distinct identity. Under the evil Donald Sterling, it was money, money, money. The Paul-Griffin era was a David Stern product, built on the backing of spite after Andrew Bynum's clothesline to J.J. Barea disgraced the Laker brand. Jerry West was brought in to teach the Clippers how to run an NBA franchise.

Welp, Ballmer helped out, a little. I asked Kurt Helin about that:

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Ranma · Post #6 » by **Ranma** » Tue Sep 18, 2018 3:06 am

I love what I'm hearing from Jenkins since it echos a lot of why I previously advocated for Travis Schlenk to be our GM. It's an approach that was also used by the Warriors during their rise to dominance while both West and Schlenk were in their front office.

You have to go beyond just evaluating physical and athletic talent as well as standard interview questions. You have to identify how a player would fit in from a chemistry standpoint. As we've learned from the disappointment of Lob City, chemistry--or rather the lack thereof--was a primary reason for our previous downfall.

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.

Adrian Wojnarowski, ESPN.com (9/17/18)

"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."

Sports Illustrated Writer Lee Jenkins Will Join LA Clippers' Front Office

Ranma · Post #7 » by **Ranma** » Tue Sep 18, 2018 4:19 am

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Spoiler:

esqtvd · Post #8 » by **esqtvd** » Tue Sep 18, 2018 4:41 am

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.

Oh me, oh my--the same broken record. The rebuttal is in Jenkins' own words:

"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."

Add in Jenkins, and there's six people and many millions of dollars replacing Doc as Grand Poobah, who was working with a skeleton scouting and developmental staff in the skinflint Sterling era. And thinking Doc [or anybody] could have solved the chemistry problem between basketball deep throat CP3 and good-time party boys Blake and DJ is just fantasy.

I'm fine with Doc moving [or being pushed] aside for this next generation Ballmer regime, but no one man could have corrected the structural problems presented by Sterling and the Big Three. [Well, Two-and-a-Half anyway.]

Post #9 » by **QRich3** » Tue Sep 18, 2018 8:21 am

Not the biggest fan of Jenkins writing, as I find it way too corny and storyline oriented, but I think this hire is all about player relationships. By all accounts he's a guy who's always worked hard to be liked by players so they open up to him, and I guess that's what attracted them to hire him. Could be a pretty good hire.

Quake Griffin · Post #10 » by **Quake Griffin** » Tue Sep 18, 2018 12:25 pm

Wrong Offseason...lol.

Ranma · Post #11 » by **Ranma** » Tue Sep 18, 2018 3:47 pm

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Ranma · Post #12 » by **Ranma** » Tue Sep 18, 2018 4:04 pm

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TucsonClip · Post #13 » by **TucsonClip** » Tue Sep 18, 2018 6:42 pm

Late in on this, but adding Jenkins is a pretty big piece. I made a joke about LeBron demanding a trade to the Clippers in 3...2..1. But in all seriousness, ive been saying for two years the plan was Kawhi. This is one of the final pieces put in place to help accomplish that goal.

Ranma · Post #14 » by **Ranma** » Tue Sep 18, 2018 9:11 pm

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Andrew Greif, Los Angeles Times (9/17/18)

“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.”

Clippers Hire Sports Illustrated’s Lee Jenkins as Executive Director of Research and Identity

Paolo Uggetti, TheRinger.com (9/18/18)

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.

So, What Is Lee Jenkins Going to Be Doing for the Clippers?

esqtvd · Post #15 » by **esqtvd** » Tue Sep 18, 2018 10:36 pm

Welcome to the Clippers, Lee. Help yourself to the Ballmer Bucks. Plenty more where they came from.

A million a year? Bet it's something like that to give up writing, which doesn't pay all that well comparatively. A couple years of Balmer Bucks and he's set for life.

Clemenza · Post #16 » by **Clemenza** » Wed Sep 19, 2018 5:17 am

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!

esqtvd · Post #17 » by **esqtvd** » Wed Sep 19, 2018 6:47 am

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!

LOL, you nailed it, man. And in the case of Lee Jenkins, from what I read he's just a very smart and incisive guy. They are successes no matter what they try. Having such people around makes for a better org. But will he ever actually earn the buckets of money Ballmer is surely throwing at him?

Does it matter? Ballmer's Bucks are a solution in search of a problem, so why leave any stone unturned when there's no limit?

In a world of experts, Jenkins would qualify as a "generalist." Look at Ballmer's background.* I bet he never wrote a line of code in his life yet ended up running Microsoft.

Jenkins never played the game, and freely admits he knows nothing about evaluating athletic talent. Ballmer's gotta feel a kindred spirit here. NBA front offices are lousy with ex-players and now with pencil-neck numbers crunchers like Daryl Morey.

This is a fresh move, and Jenkins slipped something in about becoming The Logo's

Unofficial: valet for Jerry West.

Jerry's eyes and ears on the ground. From the same article:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/sports/wp/2018/09/18/a-prominent-nba-reporter-is-jumping-to-clippers-front-office-from-sports-illustrated/?utm_term=.54b22deb91ed

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.

There you have it. Front offices get isolated from the facts on the ground, look at the numbers, and end up signing head cases and sociopaths. In the least, Jenkins' worth is gonna be in avoiding these albatrosses.

____________________________
WIKI:

*In 1977, he graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University with a B.A. in applied mathematics and economics.[21][22]

At college, Ballmer was a manager for the Harvard Crimson football team and a member of the Fox Club, worked on The Harvard Crimson newspaper as well as the Harvard Advocate, and lived down the hall from fellow sophomore Bill Gates. He scored highly in the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, an exam sponsored by the Mathematical Association of America, scoring higher than Bill Gates. He then worked as an assistant product manager at Procter & Gamble for two years, where he shared an office with Jeffrey R. Immelt, who later became CEO of General Electric. In 1980, he dropped out of the Stanford Graduate School of Business to join Microsoft.

History with Microsoft
Steve Ballmer joined Microsoft on June 11, 1980, and became Microsoft's 30th employee, the first business manager hired by Gates.[26]

Ballmer was initially offered a salary of $50,000 as well as a percentage of ownership of the company. When Microsoft was incorporated in 1981, Ballmer owned 8% of the company. In 2003, Ballmer sold 39.3 million Microsoft shares equating to approximately $955 million, thereby reducing his ownership to 4%.

In the 20 years following his hire, Ballmer headed several Microsoft divisions, including operations, operating systems development, and sales and support. From February 1992 onwards, he was Executive Vice President, Sales and Support. Ballmer led Microsoft's development of the .NET Framework. Ballmer was then promoted to President of Microsoft, a title that he held from July 1998 to February 2001, making him the de facto number two in the company to the chairman and CEO, Bill Gates.

Post #18 » by **mkwest** » Wed Sep 19, 2018 7:12 am

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

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Ranma · Post #19 » by **Ranma** » Mon Sep 24, 2018 5:09 pm

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Ranma · Post #20 » by **Ranma** » Thu Oct 4, 2018 5:52 am

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