Yaxel Lendeborg’s NBA debut came with a crash course in one of the league’s most unforgiving realities: stars talk, complain and keep coming anyway. The Warriors rookie spent much of Wednesday night on Luka Dončić, and he came away with a brutal verdict after the Lakers rolled past Golden State, 127-105.
Lendeborg didn’t sound like a player in awe of the matchup. He said he “lost all respect” for Dončić after seeing the back-and-forth up close.
"Being in there first hand, just watching all the whining and complaining, I lost all respect, man," Lendeborg said. "That was the awful.
Like, me getting frustrated, it's not about like, the foul getting called. It's about him complaining the entire game.
Then you get the foul call, congratulations bro, and then you talk to me like you did something great, bro? Come on, dog.
That shit weak."
The rookie also made it clear he wasn’t backing down in the moment. When asked what he said to Dončić, Lendeborg answered plainly: "I told him he sucks," the rookie explained. "He can't score on me."
For stretches, Lendeborg did enough to make life uncomfortable. Dončić finished 7-of-18 from the floor, with Lendeborg handling a big share of the defensive assignment.
But the rookie’s night also came with four personal fouls, including three that sent Dončić to the line. One of those whistles came at the end of the second quarter, when Lendeborg was hit with a technical foul.
Moments later, Dončić buried a half-court buzzer-beater and pointed right at him.
Dončić ended up with a game-high 28 points, and once Stephen Curry cooled off after a blistering first quarter, the Lakers took over. Still, the rookie’s energy drew backing from an old-school enforcer in the Warriors locker room. Draymond Green was on board with Lendeborg taking the fight to the other side’s best player.
"Everyone will say the rookie learned his lesson. What he learn?"
Green asked. "The next time he see him, go at his ass again."
Steve Kerr took a different tack, pointing to the rookie’s fouls as part of the adjustment process. "He had probably three fouls that probably wouldn't be fouls in any other league in the world," Kerr grumbled.
"But it's the NBA. He's gotta learn this stuff."
Dončić, for his part, seemed to welcome the confrontation. "Everybody knows when somebody starts talking, you get a different me," he said after the game. "So that was it."
That’s the lesson waiting for Lendeborg now. Dončić’s constant griping at officials is hardly a secret, and Kerr acknowledged that the NBA whistle is a different world from what Lendeborg has known before.
The rookie can chirp all he wants, but the stars in this league have a way of turning that noise into fuel. Dončić led the NBA in free-throw attempts per game last season, and if Lendeborg is going to become the defensive stopper the Warriors hope he can be, he’ll have to figure out how to operate inside that reality.
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