Warriors' Yaxel Lendeborg Confesses Potential Luka Doncic Matchup 'Spooked' Him Against Lakers
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Yaxel Lendeborg and the Warriors completed a 20-point comeback to defeat the Los Angeles Lakers, 101-89, in their second-to-last preseason game last night. The Lakers were shorthanded and lacked Luka Doncic and several other key players in their rotation.
After the game, Yaxel Lendeborg spoke to Luca Evans of the San Francisco Chronicle and admitted he practically breathed a sigh of relief when he learned the Slovenian superstar wouldn’t play in this matchup.
Before it was announced that Luka Doncic wouldn’t play, Warriors assistant coach Frank Vogel told Yaxel Lendeborg he expected him to guard the Lakers’ superstar in last night’s battle in Vegas.
“I said, ‘What the f–k?’” Lendeborg candidly said with a chuckle.
“Nobody can stop him; do your best,” Vogel apparently responded.
“I tried to act, like, all cool, and not spooked,” Lendeborg said after the Warriors’ preseason win over the Lakers. “But I was spooked, man. That’s crazy. My mind was all over the place after that.”
But when it was confirmed that Luka Doncic wasn’t expected to play, Steve Kerr threw Lendeborg back into the deep end and gave him another matchup he wasn’t expecting.
Kerr used Lendeborg in three stretches of six minutes and, since Draymond Green was not playing, also used him to guard Walker Kessler, the Lakers’ 7’2″ big man who was returning to action after missing nearly the entirety of last season.
The entire first half, the Lakers’ head coach, JJ Redick, who was impressed by Lendeborg, decided to attack him defensively in the matchup with Kessler, where he was clearly undersized. This taught the young rookie a key lesson about his defense.
“Just learning my coverages, man,” Lendeborg said. “I messed up a bunch of coverages today. I was in the wrong spots a lot of times, and I just keep putting myself out of position. So, it’s definitely a lot of questions that I need to ask, and a lot more reps that are going to be coming up soon.”
“Especially with how the team looks with the bigs, it’s going to be a lot of games where they won’t be playing,” he continued. “So I’ll have to step up and play that 5-man role. So I’m going to do a lot of self-reflecting and a lot of asking questions, watching film these next two days.”
“I would say, like, probably 5 out of 10, honestly,” Lendeborg said last week when asked how he’d evaluate his defense.
“I’m not really playing as aggressively as I did last year, on the ball. I’m worried about pretty much just everything else that’s going on right now. I’m still getting new to all the different coverages, the different lingo round here.”
“I feel like I have a high basketball IQ, just, like, when it comes to those things, I can’t do what I did in college,” Lendeborg said, talking about his defensive habits. “Because it’s not going to work here.”
Yaxel Lendeborg finished the game leading all Warriors scorers, with Brandin Podziemski also at 17 points. Additionally, Lendeborg had five rebounds, four assists, and two steals while shooting 5-for-11 from the field (45.5% FG) and 1-for-4 from the three-point line (25.0% 3P).
Unfortunately for him, the Warriors face the Lakers again on opening night (October 21), and since Luka Doncic was given the night off in the preseason game, he’ll almost certainly play when the regular season tips off at Los Angeles’ Crypto.com Arena.
It will be interesting to see how Yaxel Lendeborg approaches the matchup against Luka Doncic next Wednesday.