CHICAGO – Only six weeks ago, Yaxel Lendeborg was as big a star as there was in college basketball, in the Final Four with Michigan, his injury status for the championship game a matter of national importance. It’s been a blur for Lendeborg since winning the title, but there’s one aspect of how his life is still going to change that he’s already successfully internalized.
Likely to go in the middle of the first round of the NBA Draft, potentially to a playoff-caliber team like the Warriors, Thunder, Heat or Hornets that may be more interested in a polished older contributor than gambling on a younger player with more potential, Lendeborg knows he’s not going to be the biggest star on his next team. Not only is he OK with that, he’s excited about it.
“This year at Michigan definitely showed me already that I’m not going to be the main guy every single night, no matter what’s going on,” Lendeborg said. “At UAB, I basically had the ball in my hand every single possession. This year, we had a lot of guys that could do so many things, so being able to shift roles and do whatever I needed to do for the team to win, it was something that came naturally to me. I value team success so much, I value it more than my success, honestly. Next year, I know they’re going to have guys who are way better than me at scoring, way better than me overall. So I just have to fit in where I can.”
And while he’s 23, old for a first-round pick, his unusual career path creates an unusual set of contradictions in his profile. Lendeborg has only played six years of organized basketball after sitting out all but his final 11 games in high school because of his grades, perhaps leaving more of a ceiling for his on-court development than most graduating college seniors.
Yet the end of that journey, especially his one year at Michigan, saw him grow out of the immaturity that put him in that position, as he learned from Dusty May and his Wolverines teammates the daily commitment it takes to compete at the highest level. There’s no better positive reinforcement for that than Big Ten Player of the Year and FirstTeam All-American honors and a national championship.
“Yax grew a lot,” Michigan teammate Morez Johnson, Jr. told Hoops HQ. “He’s a completely different person. He matured. Yax always loved the game, but being at MIchigan challenged him to continue to work on his game, in practice, outside of practice. He just grew a lot in every aspect.”
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Without that experience, if Lendeborg had stayed in the draft after attending the combine a year ago, who knows where he’d be now?
“Maybe I would have been stuck in a position I didn’t want to be in,” Lendeborg said. “Maybe I would have played myself out of the league.”
Instead, he was the biggest cog at Michigan, averaging 15.1 points, 6.8 rebounds and 3.2 assists while shooting 51.5 percent, if not the only one. On a team with players like Aday Mara, Johnson, Jr. and Elliot Cadeau, Lendeborg didn’t have to be the big star every night, although he often was. And as he blossomed from the post-focused player he was at UAB to the all-around scorer, shooter, playmaker and defender he was at Michigan, he learned how many ways there were to contribute to winning that didn’t require him to actually be the one putting the ball in the basket.
That experience helped shape his mentality at the combine this week, where he was honest and realistic about what his role is going to look like in the NBA, and that he was excited to accept that challenge. Measuring at 6-foot-8.5 barefoot and 241 pounds at the combine, with a 7-foot-3.25 wingspan, he has NBA size and on-court versatility, but after spending last year as one of the kings of college basketball, he’s ready to be a different kind of piece now.
“You know, we’re all pieces on a chessboard,” Lendeborg said. “Hopefully I can be maybe a rook or something, and it’s going to be good.”
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