The Clippers finally signed a big name free agent

The Clippers have hired Lee Jenkins as the team’s new executive director of research and identity. And here we thought kids from Vanderbilt couldn’t make it in the league ...

Jenkins, of course, is a Sports Illustrated legend (still just 40 years old!) and the sport’s pre-eminent profile writer. It’s not unprecedented to go from writing (Jenkins’ old SI colleague Luke Winn works for the Raptors), though it is pretty rare.

Even more, the usual path from journalism to working for a team is through analytics, as happened with John Hollinger, SB Nation alum Sebastian Pruiti, Kevin Pelton (for a spell), Seth Partnow, and legendary Dean Oliver (and others I’m unintentionally forgetting). Jenkins is different — his strength is in prose, in reportage, in relationships. (Did I mention prose? Dude is a writer’s writer.) The Clippers are richer for this, and frankly, our insight into the NBA’s biggest stars and personalities is poorer.

That said, we all know this is just a ruse under which Lee will orchestrate the relocation of the Clippers back to his beloved San Diego. Three-dimensional chess.

Dwyane Wade announced on Monday that he will play one more season in the NBA. The Heat will love to have him! Let’s hope he can help Miami make another playoff push in a better-than-you-think Eastern Conference.

What’s so striking about Wade now is that he looks his age while his friend and contemporary LeBron James looks like a kid. Wade is three years older (despite being in the same draft class) and had a style of play more reliant on athleticism and conducive to injury.

But Wade at his peak in the late Aughts and early ‘10s? Few were more divine. Can’t wait to enjoy the season-long farewell tour.

Jimmy Butler has some beef with the Timberwolves, and will lay it on the table in a meeting with Tom Thibodeau and Scott Layden on Tuesday. Butler is a top free agent in 2019, so this is super important for the Wolves and all the teams who hope to chase him. I wrote up the two ways the Wolves cannot respond to Butler’s frustration. There is a scary Karl-Anthony Towns nexus, and an inkling something’s the matter in that direction too given that Towns hasn’t signed a rookie extension yet.

Five candidates to become first-time all-stars in 2019.

More media-to-team shake-ups: Bones Barry is joining the Spurs. Again. That shot in the 2006 playoffs still haunts a region.

Meanwhile, the Rockets lost assistant coach Jeff Bzdelik on the eve of training camp. Yikes.

Check out images from the Seattle Storm’s championship parade. The Storm are not going to the White House, by the way.

The Knicks want Kyrie Irving. Would Kyrie actually jump there next summer?

The Women’s Basketball World Cup tips off in Spain this weekend. A’ja Wilson might make the team coming off her rookie WNBA season.

And finally: Whitney McIntosh is asking the hard questions about an enormous Knicks/Celine Dion/Finals-related plot hole in the classic romcom How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. I empathize as someone who lost my mind because a fake chyron had an impossible (for the time of year) NBA score in My Best Friend’s Wedding.

Be excellent to each other.