LAIE, Hawaii – Yaxel Lendeborg could not tell you who he will be, just yet. Barely even who he is. For years, a variety of voices at a variety of levels of basketball have nudged him along, holding a mirror to his 6-foot-9-plus frame and urging him to fill in the outline of what’s clearly there. Sometimes he’s seen it. Sometimes he hasn’t. Sometimes (most times) he would show up at 10:58 for an 11:00 workout. He’s learning, now, to show up at 8:00.
In December 2023, Lendeborg rode home on the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s team bus after a loss to Arkansas State, watching the ESPN re-tape on his phone. He had 17 points and 10 rebounds, after a month of single-digit box scores. There was somebody in there. Assistant coach Aaron Johnson, sitting in front of him, swiveled to look back at Lendeborg.
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“Can you just do this every game?” Johnson asked. “Why can’t you do this?”
“I don’t know, man,” Lendeborg said, as Johnson recalled. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
Johnson has become a trusted mentor since Lendeborg blossomed into one of the best players in the country at UAB. He does not think Lendeborg has imposter syndrome. He simply never had an identity, Johnson theorizes, in a hoops industry that often demands it too young. Lendeborg didn’t realize basketball was an option in high school, and since has tunneled a path from Arizona Western to UAB and Michigan and now the Bay Area, poking his head up to survey his surroundings at every stop.
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He has learned to want more, slowly, tapping into a big man’s body with a wing’s offensive skills. He wants an All-Rookie First Team nod in his first season with the Warriors, after Golden State minted him at pick No. 11 in June. Maybe even a Rookie of the Year. Those are the goals. But Lendeborg wants something greater as a human being, too.
“I just want to be 100% confident in myself,” he told the Chronicle Tuesday, gazing out at the hardwood of BYU-Hawaii’s gym. “Find a way to have that. Find a way to not get so, like –”
Do you feel like you’re not?
“Yeah, I still feel like I’m not,” he affirmed. “Not as these guys would like me to be. Or myself, as much as I would like to be, as well.”
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Across a national championship season at Michigan, his celebrations and social-media streams and passion for life went viral. That is only one side of Lendeborg, a refreshingly honest young man who is secure in expressing insecurity. Even after his life-changing $28 million rookie deal, anxiety bubbles up. Lendeborg explained that he’ll step in a room and be afraid to say the first word. Afraid to look someone in the eye. Afraid to say hello.
“It could be there, or it could be me on the court,” Lendeborg said Thursday. “I have a wide-open shot, I miss a couple shots, I don’t want to shoot no more, kinda thing. So I’m just gonna give it up. And that forces me to make more mistakes than I would like.”
The Warriors need many things from the gifted Lendeborg. To make shots. To become a plus NBA defender. To be a bridge, with six of their seven previous first-round picks no longer on the roster. All of it rests on Lendeborg’s deeper journey of self-discovery.
He is far from alone. And he has already found one prominent ally on his new team in Draymond Green.
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“I’ve asked him tons of questions already,” Lendeborg gushed. “He’s given me so much feedback. He’s basically been like my cheat sheet so far. He’s really been taking on the role of being, like, my vet. So, it’s been really nice having that.
“I was really shocked and surprised, too,” Lendeborg continued, “because I was gonna think he didn’t have time to want to talk to me or care to talk to me.
But Green does. Because the two have been connected longer than Lendeborg even realizes.
In 2014, Green fired agent Ron Shade, who’d represented him for the first two years of his career. It wasn’t personal. Green was coming off a playoff breakout in 2013-14, and much of Shade’s time was spent focusing on two-time All-Star client Luol Deng. Shade was slightly confused at the time, but came to understand.
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A rare thing happened after the firing: Green and Shade became close friends. Green will call Shade, still – even as a well-known client of Rich Paul and Klutch Sports – and talk about life. And their children. And vacations. And watches.
Across this past season, Green would call Shade and share thoughts on one of his newer clients: Lendeborg, who was ascending to national stardom after withdrawing from the NBA draft and transferring to Michigan.
The check-ins began humbly. After Lendeborg first committed to Michigan in April 2025, Shade posted a picture of an Air Jordan Michigan shoe to Instagram; Green, a well-known Michigan State lifer, commented “yuck,” as Shade recalled. But later, Green would tell Shade over the phone, Young fella looks good. Young fella’s got a chance.
After Michigan dispatched Michigan State on Lendeborg’s senior night in March, Shade called Green while they were out at dinner.
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“Yaxel said, ‘Hey, Draymond! We just won! Are you gonna say Go Blue now? ‘” Johnson, who was there, recalled.
“And Draymond goes, ‘Yaxel. I done won a lot of games against them. I’ll never say that.'”
On June 11, after Lendeborg’s pre-draft workout with Golden State, Green called Shade to relay feedback he’d heard, to try and provide advice for Lendeborg. Wherever he’d land.
“We just talked about, defensively, how much better he could be,” Shade recalled. “How to get to certain spots defensively – (Yaxel’s) trying to block shots, how to use different angles to get to a certain point where the ball is to block shots. I mean, Draymond is an exceptionally smart basketball player … he just looked at different things that he did and just tried to say, ‘Hey, you don’t have to be that much taller, you don’t have to be that much more athletic, but if you just mentally utilize your body to see the game in this facet as opposed to a different way, it’ll make it a little bit easier for you.'”
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Golden State, of course, wound up drafting Lendeborg, a landing spot that Shade said “couldn’t have worked out any better.” Shade drew up Green as a mentor a long time ago, when he was first recruiting Lendeborg as a potential client at UAB.
“One of my pitches to Yax at the time was, ‘Look, I want you to be a Draymond-type player at a high level,” Shade said. “Play multiple positions, guard multiple positions, do a lot on the court … I was like, ‘That’s the type of player I could foresee you being.'”
Trainer Irv Roland, a former NBA assistant coach with the Utah Jazz, tends to run his players ragged in pre-draft workouts. So one day in the summer of 2025, Lendeborg – then testing draft waters out of UAB – and a group got the full brunt of it. They hunched together in a huddle when it was all said and done, they were worn out.
Roland turned away for a while to shag basketballs, turned back, and found Lendeborg dancing for a TikTok video.
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“I’m like, ‘Dude, clearly you weren’t that tired,'” Roland recalled.
Roland spoke with only a hint of annoyance and plenty of affection. Lendeborg may feel self-conscious but when comfortable, he’s unfiltered, often writing diaries via Twitch live-streams.
“It’s always something with Yax, you know what I mean?” fellow Warriors rookie Graham Ike said on media day Monday, with the grin of someone withholding a story. “You can never put your finger on it, but you can expect something with him.”
Teammates light up when discussing Lendeborg’s personality. It remains to be seen how that will play when the pressure rises in Golden State this fall. And Green already issued a mock public warning to Lendeborg on his own podcast in July.
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“Training camp is coming soon enough, and you know, gotta rein the rookie in a little bit,” Green said on “The Draymond Green Show.” “Teach him a few things … I think you all know why I’m hinting at training camp. It’ll get here soon enough, Yax. Enjoy all your media.”
Several ripples of consternation ensued among fans. Those who know Green, Shade said, know he was joking. And Lendeborg knew Green, a bit. Maybe not quite well enough, yet.
“For me, it was more so, like, is he going to start bullying me now?” Lendeborg said. “Like, more than he already was going to? Is he going to haze me, and all that? Make me pick up his jock – his underwear, just cause? Stuff like that. Nothing really, like, scary.
“But I knew it was all jokes and games from the beginning, so I didn’t get too worried about it.”
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Green’s view and approach toward mentorship, head coach Steve Kerr said, has never really changed. He’s always taken those reins. Sometimes he’s succeeded (Kevon Looney). Sometimes it wasn’t enough (Jonathan Kuminga). Sometimes he’s failed (The Punch).
“He’s obviously an emotional guy, and his emotion has gotten the best of him at times,” Kerr told the Chronicle. “So he’s not perfect. But he knows his responsibility to help younger players, help them grow.”
Green faces an uncertain future on an expiring contract. He was mentioned in more trade rumors than ever last season. Longtime close friend Bennie Fowler spent time at Green’s house in February a couple days before the deadline. Green, Fowler said, was in constant contact with agent Rich Paul and Warriors general manager Mike Dunleavy.
“I think he was just numb to the situation at the time,” said Fowler, who played football at Michigan State while Green was on the men’s basketball team.
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And yet, Green remains. He wants to leave Golden State in a better place, Fowler said. Lendeborg is the most crucial piece to that puzzle. So Green came in, on Monday’s media day, with a plan to take Lendeborg under his wing.
“I think for me, with Yaxel, will be staying on him about the aggression,” Green said. “At all times, you should be downhill, trying to get to the rim.”
Not a day later, after a flight to Hawaii, Lendeborg grabbed a rebound and pushed the break during a drill in the Warriors’ first practice of training camp. Forward Gui Santos backpedaled, the only line of defense, a play Lendeborg outlined to the Chronicle. The entire right side of the floor beckoned, with an opportunity to go at or through the lighter Santos.
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Instead, Lendeborg deferred. Stephen Curry ran with him, on his left. Lendeborg kicked the ball to him, thinking he could get ahead of Santos for a layup. Curry didn’t. A transition turnover – an absolute no-no talking point for Golden State this camp – ensued a few seconds later.
And Lendeborg caught an earful from Green, the most outwardly confident man on the floor trying to inspire the next era.
You gotta take that! Green screamed, as Lendeborg recalled.
I wanna see somebody stop you one-on-one!
Lendeborg, like many, had a perception of Green before ever actually meeting him. He grew up in a world where Green’s technical fouls and physical demonstrations have provided countless viral moments.
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“All the videos that me and my friends watched, like, it’s always him crashing out and going crazy, screaming at somebody,” Lendeborg said. “So, I mean, obviously, there’s still that. But it’s not coming from a bad place. It’s just like, that’s just who he is. He’s going to be aggressive. He’s going to be like that. But he means all love. And that’s something that people gotta understand as well – it’s a lot of passion behind this. And it’s like, if you’re not in his shoes, you can’t really judge how he is.”
“He’s a great person, a great human being, and he just has a little temper, you know?” Lendeborg finished, laughing. “So, it’s cool. It’s all good.”
In the summer of 2025, Roland brought Lendeborg – then testing the waters out of UAB – to a camp for draft prospects in Las Vegas hosted by Jayson Tatum and Chris Paul. When Lendeborg arrived in the camp’s meal-room and saw Paul, he reacted lik a “fan at a game,” Roland recalled. Roland pulled him aside for a quick conversation. Dude, relax.
“I’m like, ‘Dude, a year from now, you’re going to be on the court with these guys,'” Roland said. “And I think just even hearing that out loud is, like, shocking to him still. You know? Because he’s not like most guys that are first-round picks, where they were high school All-American, and they’ve been ranked nationally since seventh grade.
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“He’s not that kid,” Roland continued. “So that’s why you kinda get some of these, ‘aw shucks’ moments from him. Because he’s not ruined by the system.”
Lendeborg rounded out his game at Michigan, upping a once-shaky three-point shooting to a 37% clip on 4.5 attempts per game and thriving as an occasional playmaking hub. He’s wired to lean more into his strengths. He knows, too, what he was drafted for.
“He understands what Steph and Draymond is looking to do,” Johnson said. “He understands that they’re in the later years of their careers, and that winning and winning big is the most important thing. So he’s not worried about not winning, you know what I mean? He feels like he can play a role in winning, and he knows he has to play a role in winning.”
That, already, has brought changed habits. Lendeborg will be the first to admit he was not a player who would stay late in the gym earlier in a young basketball career. At Golden State, he is.
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“I’ve literally had three different conversations with him,” Kerr said at media day, “telling him to get out of here for a few days.”
He has sought advice from all point, as Shade has worked to keep a stable network of voices around him. During the summer, Roland set up an hour-long meeting between Lendeborg and Kyrie Irving, his childhood idol, to talk through what to expect in NBA life. At Jimmy Butler‘s players-only minicamp in San Diego last week, Lendeborg peppered Butler with questions, asking him to teach him his rocker-step move (Butler said he’d teach Lendeborg once he returns from ACL rehab.)
And shortly after he was drafted, too, Lendeborg texted Curry – a fellow Octagon client – to ask his advice and habits on getting and staying in shape.
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“(He) was basically like, becoming uncomfortable in your practice,” Lendeborg recalled. “Like, if you’re going to practice or work out, do it full speed. Don’t just half-ass it. And that’s something I’ve always done. I never really went as fast as I could during workouts, just so I could actually work on my rep. But it’s like, you can work on the rep at full speed.
“And then controlling my breathing is something he said as well, because it’s all in the mind,” Lendeborg continued. “So, he basically told me to harp and focus on those two things, and that’s something I’ve been implementing ever since.”
After Tuesday’s practice in Hawaii, veteran Gary Payton II handed Lendeborg a camcorder. Rookie duties. Lendeborg didn’t grumble, despite slight awkwardness. He made his way over, eventually, to new forward Georges Niang, engrossed in the direct middle of an interview with 95.7 The Game’s Whitley Sandretto. He apologized for interrupting.
“Um,” Lendeborg said. He pointed at the camera. He pointed at the 33-year-old Niang.
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“How was Day One, buddy?” Lendeborg said, cocking his hip and focusing like a mom filming home-video memories.
Doing the little things, Lendeborg believes, will earn him respect. From Golden State. From Green. He cares about it all. He wants to belong.
“These guys aren’t here to watch me take a bunch of dribbles and try to score the ball every single time,” Lendeborg told the Chronicle. “That’s not who I was. That’s not who I’ll turn out to be. So me just going out here, trying to get an extra rebound, and kicking an extra (pass), is what he wants to see. So I’m going to continue to try to do that. Try to play like (Draymond), and mimic what he did to become so great. And I mean, I feel like everything else is gonna come naturally.
“He loves my personality,” Lendeborg continued. “I feel like we get along a lot easier than people think.”
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This article originally published at How Draymond Green has become Yaxel Lendeborg’s ‘vet,’ helping Warriors rookie achieve hoop dreams.
