ADVERTISEMENT
The player Golden State chose with pick No. 11 is the biggest, burliest, most defensively accomplished wing in this class.
They were delighted — all viral video interpretations aside — and the Warriors’ powerbrokers weren’t shy about showing or discussing it on Tuesday night.
They ended up selecting Michigan’s Yaxel Lendeborg with the 11th pick in the NBA Draft and there were very rational reasons for the franchise cheeriness:
Lendeborg is the biggest, burliest, most defensively accomplished wing in this class and the most versatile player available anywhere near this spot; and he fills the Warriors’ most aching need in the last years of the Stephen Curry era — somebody who can immediately give them useful and physical minutes at either forward position while Jimmy Butler and Moses Moody recover from major injuries.
ADVERTISEMENT
Maybe even somebody who can dribble twice and dunk the ball when the defense is putting three guys on Curry. Someone who will be dying to do this. Dare the Warriors dream?
“This is a guy who, historically, is off the charts in terms of his production at his age,” Dunleavy said of Lendeborg late Tuesday. “There’s basically never been a player this good at his age.”
It could’ve just been an accidental but reflexive reaction by Dunleavy to keep repeating the A-word in this situation, or it’s possible he knew that the best defense against the one clear line of criticism over this pick was to raise it himself.
Simply, Lendeborg will turn 24 on Sept. 30, which makes him just about the oldest player the Warriors could’ve selected and their oldest first-round pick since they took Chris Gatling (then one month older than Lendeborg is now) in 1991.
This is not the usual pathway for a team that has announced its intentions to get younger and build a bridge to the next era of Warriors basketball. Older draftees tend to have lower ceilings and shorter careers — the NBA is a young man’s game and 24-year-old rookies aren’t really that young at all.
But Warriors executives stressed that Lendeborg is a unique example. He started playing basketball late, he started at junior college then moved to UAB and finally to Michigan last season, which happened just in time for Lendeborg to star in the run to a national title.
And, as Dunleavy said, it’s not like Lendeborg was bad at any of his stops along the way to this point. He was actually excellent — good enough to earn millions of NIL dollars at Michigan. And the Warriors believe he will be excellent soon enough in the NBA.
Does that mean Lendeborg will absolutely be a better pick than, say, Michigan teammate Aday Mara, who went 12th to Oklahoma City, or Tennessee’s Nate Ament, who went 13th to Milwaukee (though Miami made the pick and will send Ament to the Bucks on July 6 when the Giannis Antetokounmpo trade is official)?
No, nothing’s ever guaranteed in a draft. I think Mara, as a huge and efficient center, and the young and tools-y Ament could turn out to be more dynamic players than Lendeborg. But my understanding is that the Warriors didn’t really consider taking either player.
Note: The lively draft-room scene broadcast nationally while the Warriors were on the clock was, according to multiple sources, actually Dunleavy and Joe Lacob brushing off a moderate offer to move out of the slot.
Once Arizona’s Brayden Burries went off the board 10th to Milwaukee, the Warriors were set on Lendeborg. And if he can walk into a major role, fit in with Curry and the other veterans, and pick up Steve Kerr’s system right away, he’ll be the anti-Jonathan Kuminga.
If he’s helping the Warriors win games at 24, well, that’s a lot younger than almost every rotation player last season.
“I mean, he’s what, 23? Almost 24?” Dunleavy said with a smile after the pick. “I’m not worried — because he’s not 38.”
One team source indicated that the Warriors had Lendeborg rated about even with Burries and only had Duke’s Cam Boozer clearly placed on a higher level in this draft.
That might or might not be some slight retro-editing of their true big board (they weren’t going to take a lead guard in this draft and that position dominated the top nine selections). But either way, the Warriors definitely always were very high on Lendeborg and definitely always weren’t so worried about his birthdate.
Even if Lendeborg was actually the fifth or sixth player on the Warriors’ board, this was a strong enough draft to make the selection a happy one. If Burries had slipped to 11, I imagine it would’ve been an even giddier draft room, and Burries, at 20, simply has more practical upside than Lendeborg.
But there’s a vision of Lendeborg perhaps developing into a version of OG Anunoby (on the high side of projections) or something similar but better than Jarred Vanderbilt or Tari Eason. And there’s a thought that Kerr can throw Lendeborg in there to guard anybody from Kevin Durant to Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Maybe right away.
“I think he can play everything,” Dunleavy said when asked what position he expects Lendeborg to play. “I think he can guard, potentially, one to five. And then offensively, I think he’s a forward. He’s a four who can play some small-ball center. The way he handles the ball, there’s some backcourt ballhandling responsibilities he can take care of. The intrigue with this pick for us is the versatility.”
Yeah, that sounds a lot like the role Draymond Green has filled exceedingly well many years. It’s hard to dispute that adding Lendeborg is a sign that the Warriors are not automatically saving every minute possible for Draymond, since it’s hard to imagine a fluid offense with those two on the floor for long stints together.
But it’s never bad to have multiple guys who can defend everybody. It’s just that the Warriors aren’t writing in 35 minutes per game for Draymond anymore; of course, Draymond’s minutes were down to 27.5 per last season. I think that’s naturally going to move closer to 25 this season.
Does the Lendeborg pick change everything for the Warriors in 2026-27? Nope. They’re going to need some significant free-agent or trade additions next month to make anything like that happen.
We’ll see about LeBron James’ decision. We’ll see if the Warriors can sign Draymond and Kristaps Porzingis to multiyear deals that keep the Warriors far enough under the luxury-tax line to give them access to the $15.1 million nontaxpayer midlevel exception. They’re probably going to need it to land anybody who can materially help Curry on the offensive side.
But with Lendeborg on the roster, the Warriors know they can fill at least some of the Butler/Moody minutes with the biggest rookie wing they could find for the job. They know he’s a winner. And they know he’s not a project — he should be pretty good right away.
So this was a split-the-difference kind of pick, a bit of a compromise between the Warriors’ understanding that they must get younger and the reality that their best option at 11 was a player who isn’t that young.
More about the author
Filed under
Leave a Reply