A Sports Illustrated reporter is leaving the magazine to join an NBA front office.

Lee Jenkins, who has been the outlet's lead NBA writer for eight years, is joining the Los Angeles Clippers as their new executive director of research and identity.

“SI remains the ultimate platform for sportswriting and I would not leave for another media outlet," Jenkins told Sports Illustrated. "But I was offered an extraordinary opportunity to work in the front office of an NBA team and see the league I cover from a different angle.

"I’ve been privileged to tell a lot of triumphant basketball stories over the past decade. With Steve Ballmer and Jerry West, Lawrence Frank and Michael Winger, Doc Rivers and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, I’m going to try to help build one."

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Jenkins, 40, has become one of the most well-respected NBA reporters in the country, writing definitive profiles and cover stories about the league's key figures and most important developments — including, perhaps most notably, LeBron James' announcement in 2014 that he was returning to the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Jenkins, who originally joined Sports Illustrated as an NFL reporter in 2007, is the second staff member to leave the magazine for a professional sports franchise in the past two years. A little more than a year ago, longtime reporter Luke Winn took a job with the Toronto Raptors' front office as their director of prospect strategy.

Contact Tom Schad at tschad@usatoday.com or on Twitter @Tom_Schad.