From rookies to players with seasons of NBA experience, see how the former Wolverines fared in this year's summer league below.
The NBA Summer League has come and gone, and several recent Michigan men's basketball standouts took part. From rookies to players with seasons of NBA experience, see how the former Wolverines fared in this year's summer league below.
Yaxel Lendeborg, Golden State Warriors (rookie)
Stats: 14.0 points, 6.3 rebounds, 4.3 assists, 1.3 steals and 1.0 blocks per game
Lendeborg continued to roll through an incredible 2026 for him. The first-team All-American, Big Ten Player of the Year, national champion and No. 11 overall pick led Golden State to the summer league title, and was named the MVP of the championship game. Lendeborg started all seven games for Golden State, logging 26.3 minutes per game. In addition to his well-rounded box score, he was efficient, shooting 48.8 percent from 3.
Morez Johnson Jr., Dallas Mavericks (rookie)
Stats: 18.5 points, 6.5 rebounds, 1.5 assists, 3.0 blocks, 2.5 steals per game
The first draft pick of Dusty May's tenure in Dallas, Johnson only played in two games in the Summer League. his first game was incredible, with 27 points, 8 rebounds, 3 assists, 3 steals and 2 blocks while shooting 11-of-13 on 2s and 1-of-4 on 3s. But his second game, Johnson struggled to the tune of 10 points, seven fouls, five rebounds, four blocks and two steals in 28 minutes, in which Dallas was outscored by 22 points.
Aday Mara, Oklahoma City Thunder (rookie)
Stats: 8.7 points, 7.7 rebounds, 3.7 assists, 1.0 blocks, 0.3 steals per game
Mara struggled in his first action with the Thunder, and was even named ESPN's most disappointing rookie. It didn't help that Oklahoma City went winless in the Summer League and may not have been deploying a roster comparable to the lineups Mara will play with in the fall, but the 7-foot-3 center struggled to make his scoring presence felt in his three games, ranking 98th in minutes per game but 174th in points per game.
Roddy Gayle Jr., Detroit Pistons (rookie)
Stats: 5.5 points, 2.3 rebounds, 0.8 assists per game
Undrafted but given a shot with Detroit, Gayle opened the summer with two 10-point games, scoring efficiently off the bench and hitting four 3s. He only scored two total points in his other two appearances, however, finishing with 22 points in four games and shooting 61.5 percent from the field in four games.
Nimari Burnett, Toronto Raptors (rookie)
Stats: 10.6 points, 4.4 rebounds, 2.6 assists, 1.0 steals, 0.2 blocks per game
Burnett, who signed an exhibit-10 contract with Toronto ahead of the summer league after going undrafted, had a productive summer league showing. He shot 40.6 percent from the field, but earned 22.3 minutes per night in five games for the Raptors, who went 3-2.
Danny Wolf, Brooklyn Nets
Stats: 11.8 points, 5.8 rebounds, 1.8 assists, 0.8 steals, 0.8 blocks per game
Wolf, who averaged 8.9 points, 4.9 rebounds, and 2.2 assists per game as a first-round rookie for Brooklyn, continued to roll in the NBA Summer League. Notably, he only made one 3 in four games, but was an efficient scorer in the paint and had a top-50 plus-minus out of more than 400 participants.
Vlad Goldin, Miami
Stats: 8.6 points, 6.6 rebounds, 1.6 assists, 1.6 blocks, 0.6 steals per game
Another second-year NBA player, currently on a two-way contract with Miami, Goldin started all five games for the Heat in the Summer League. He ranked in the top 50 in the league in both rebounds and blocks
Kobe Bufkin, New Orleans Pelicans
Stats: 21.3 points, 5.3 rebounds, 3.0 assists, 2.0 steals, 1.0 blocks per game
Entering his fourth NBA season on his third team, Bufkin needed to have a strong showing at the Summer League. And the 22-year-old did, ranking 10th in the Summer League in points per game, including a 30-point showing in his first game. Him and Liam McNeeley were the only two players to average at least 20 points, five rebounds and three assists per game.
The Michigan men's basketball roster remained intact despite a mid-summer coaching change, with LJ Cason the lone player who will explore other programs via the Transfer Portal.
New head coach Mike Boynton Jr., promoted from an assistant role after Dusty May left for the NBA, identified roster retention as his biggest priority during his first weeks in charge. When the Wolverines met for their first summer workout, he said, he made sure players realized "the huddle looked exactly the way they thought it would look, minus one person."
But the Wolverines might not be quite done with their roster, as Boynton Jr. shared this week on "Defend the Block." He and the U-M staff are interested in adding a "veteran piece" to complement a relatively young team.
"There actually are several people potentially available with either a court ruling going one way on the other, or somebody transferring from another school because something happens there," Boynton Jr. said. "So we're very much in tune to who's available.
"We would like to, in a perfect world, add another veteran piece if we could. Maybe another ball handler, decision maker, a playmaker, somebody who could help add some element of playmaking to our team. But we do like the team as it presently is constructed. And so we'll do both. We'll continue to work with this group and develop the guys that we have, but we'll keep our ears to the ground as to maybe how some of this stuff is playing out there in the market."
Michigan player who is impressing in offseason workouts
The U-M staff has been impressed with Quinn Costello so far this offseason, Boynton Jr. said.
"He's bigger than he was. I think he's grown here in the last couple months, and he picks up things really fast — really, really smart," Boynton Jr. said. "Maybe a guy who people aren't maybe as in tune with what he can do and how much he can help, and we don't know for sure, right? We've still got to get out there. He's got to react to it in a real game setting with people in the building. But in terms of a guy that's flying under the radar a little bit — I mean, you say that for a guy who was a McDonald's All American — I think he's going to have an impact on our team that maybe some people haven't anticipated."
247Sports' Director of Scouting Adam Finkelstein's evaluation of Costello described him as "a budding stretch-four with a very intriguing combination of positional size, skill, and vertical athleticism. He has soft natural touch, stretches the floor, and can make shots off the dribble with an increasingly compact release."
He's the second McDonald's All-American in as many years for the Wolverines following Trey McKenney's participation in the all-star game in 2025.