Yaxel Lendeborg spent the summer stacking up wins, and Sunday night gave him one more.
The Warriors beat the Grizzlies 94-90 to capture the Las Vegas Summer League championship, with Lendeborg outdueling Cameron Boozer in a matchup of lottery picks. Lendeborg, the No. 11 pick, finished with 21 points and 10 rebounds and earned Championship Game MVP honors as Golden State closed the event at 5-1.
For Lendeborg, it was a second title in four months after winning an NCAA championship with Michigan in April. According to Ben Golliver of ESPN, he joined Davion Mitchell as the only players to pull off that combination.
“Coming into this program, I just wanted to prove that I’m a winner,” Lendeborg said. “Doing stuff like this - not caring about the stats and just caring about the outcome.
I’m going to continue to push that into next season with the bigger Warriors. … At Michigan, we played team ball.
Here, we play team ball. That’s what wins games and championships.”
Golden State had to dig out of a hole to get there. Boozer, the No. 3 pick, gave Memphis a 76-66 lead late in the third quarter with a three-pointer, but Lendeborg helped spark the comeback. Deivon Smith added 21 points off the bench, and the Warriors put five players in double figures.
Memphis still had chances in the closing minutes. Boozer missed a three-pointer that would have put the Grizzlies ahead, and Olivier-Maxence Prosper turned it over on an inbounds play.
“Their butts got tight,” Lendeborg said. “They puckered up.
Some of us are built for the moment and some aren’t. … Our spirit, our will, our desire to not lose is pretty much what helped us out.”
Lendeborg, who turns 24 in late September, is expected to play a complementary role for the Warriors once the season starts. In Las Vegas, though, he got the chance to show the full package. Over six games, he averaged 14.8 points, 6.8 rebounds and 4.0 assists in 28.3 minutes per game while shooting 45.9% from the field and 35.7% from three-point range.
He also made clear he enjoyed getting the better of Boozer, whose Duke team beat Michigan in February.
“I think about [revenge] every time I play [Boozer],” Lendeborg said. “Every game we play, them refs be saving him. … It is a competitive nature [with] everybody that gets drafted ahead of me.”
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