The first thing Yaxel Lendeborg heard was simple, brutal and very much to the point: he was getting Luka Doncic.
For a rookie, that kind of assignment can feel like the league slamming the door open all at once. Lendeborg said he was just “on my phone chilling” when a coach came over and told him, “Hey, you're guarding Luka tonight.”
His reaction came fast.
“I said, ‘What the f-k?’ Like, he's just going to throw me in,” Lendeborg said.
“I'm like, ‘What the h-l?’ So, I tried to act all cool and not spooked.
But I was spooked, man. That's crazy.
But yeah, I mean, after that he just said like, I think he averages 30 to 35 so he’s like, ‘Nobody can stop him. Do your best.’
I mean, my mind was all over the place after that, but we come here, they say he's not playing… It was a complete shift of what I had planned in my mind.”
The whole thing underscores the confidence the Warriors see in Lendeborg. Since being drafted, he’s carried himself like a player who doesn’t blink at the guy across from him. The Doncic assignment was a reminder that the team trusts him to handle tough defensive work, even if the matchup came with a jolt.
And there’s a reason that trust matters. Lendeborg has the size and length to make life difficult on defense. But even with all that, a player like Doncic is a different kind of problem - the kind that can still win the night even when the defender does everything right.
Luckily for Lendeborg, he didn’t have to learn that lesson in that preseason moment.
Yaxel Lendeborg reaction to when Frank Vogel told him to guard Luka Doncic:
— Fullcourtpass (@Fullcourtpass) October 15, 2026
“I was like what the fu*k?”
(h/t @Yaxel_Muse) pic.twitter.com/k9taKsGyIZ
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