CHICAGO — Yaxel Lendeborg admitted on Wednesday he may have been a little too generous toward Michigan when speaking to a reporter a couple of days earlier. The transfer from UAB had said he was perhaps [leaning Michigan over the NBA 60 to 40](https://www.mlive.com/wolverines/2025/05/yaxel-lendeborg-appears-torn-in-michigan-vs-nba-decision.html). Spending more time at the NBA draft combine changed the equation.
“This whole process is really opening my eyes,” Lendeborg said. “I feel like now I’m definitely equal. I’m super stuck, quicksand, whatever you want to call it. I’m stuck in between for sure.”
Lendeborg’s performance at the combine and subsequent workouts will help determine his draft position. ESPN’s latest mock draft, released this week, had Lendeborg going No. 29 overall, the second-to-last pick of the first round.
It’s a meteoric rise for someone who played only 12 games of high school basketball, two years at a junior college, and the past two in the American Athletic Conference. His backstory is fascinating.
He was born in Puerto Rico — while his mother was a college student there — and moved to the Dominican Republic, where his parents are from, when he was about 2. A year later he came to the United States, living in Ohio until he was 8 before moving to New Jersey.
“In high school I was a terrible kid,” he said, noting that he wasn’t on track to graduate until a heart-to-heart conversation with his mother before his senior year. He told ESPN he played video games for 19 hours a day.
His mom shipped him to Arizona Western, a junior college. “It was awful,” he said. “I pretty much cried the whole flight there. As soon as I get to Arizona, it was terrible. It was just straight desert. There’s no trees. It was brutal.”
Over his two years there, basketball went from a chore to a passion. “Now it’s what I want to do for the rest of my life,” he said. He was a two-time All-American there before moving up to the NCAA’s Division I. At UAB, the 6-foot-9 forward had his fingerprints all over games. Both seasons, he was an all-conference performer and the league’s defensive player of the year. Last season, he averaged 17.7 points, 11.4 rebounds, 4.2 assists, 1.8 blocks and 1.7 steals per game.
“Great player; great energy,” said P.J. Haggerty, whose Memphis team faced Lendeborg three times last season.
His production has provided him two great options for next season: Michigan or the NBA. Here’s what he said on Wednesday about what will keep him in the draft past the NCAA’s May 28 deadline:
“I just want to be in a position where I’m safe, where I know that I can get the opportunity to play, opportunity to prove myself, hopefully a guaranteed contract would be cool.”
Guaranteed contracts are awarded to first-round picks automatically; typically several second-round picks also receive them. Lendeborg wants a team to commit to drafting him. “I hope it happens before May 28th,” he said. “Me and my agency are gonna talk as much as we can to try to get a promise from one team. Just one team. That’s all we need.”
He said his ultimate goal is to be a top-20 pick; if he can’t get an assurance that high, he said, “it will be a little easier to make my decision.”
Lendeborg impressed in Wednesday’s scrimmage. He scored 13 points on 6 of 11 shooting and grabbed a team-high nine rebounds in 23 minutes. Michigan’s Vladislav Goldin often went head to head with Lendeborg in the scrimmage. “He fits anywhere because he does everything on the court,” Goldin said.
Multiple scouts told MLive they liked Lendeborg’s basketball IQ and feel for the game. As for whether he’d stay in the draft, they mentioned NIL money. One scout had heard Michigan was offering close to $3 million. The last pick in the first round is guaranteed more than $4.6 over two years.
“The NIL thing never really played a factor,” Lendeborg said. “I talked to (Michigan coach) Dusty (May) a lot about just trying to develop skills that I need to develop. And that’s what he focused on. He threw the number out there just because they have it. (I said), ‘OK, cool. We don’t have to talk no more about it. We’re good.’”
Lendeborg said he was a big fan of May’s when the coach was at Florida Atlantic, in the same conference as UAB. He appreciated May’s calm, player-friendly sideline demeanor. The two connected once Lendeborg entered the transfer portal. “From the jump, he was expressing to me that he’s willing to wait while I go through this NBA combine process,” Lendeborg said. “Other teams weren’t saying the same thing. They were willing to outbid the NBA and I wasn’t messing with that.
“I wanted a school that was going to rock with me from the beginning to the end, and that was Dusty.”
Lendeborg said he crossed paths with May on Wednesday and the Michigan coach joked with him about his performance: “You’re doing good. But try not to do _that_ good.”
Lendeborg visited Michigan’s campus for three days and “fell in love with it.” He was drawn to how Michigan used Danny Wolf last season. “That’s always a role that I wanted to play,” Lendeborg said. “Coming off ball screens, being able to make that read.”
Will he get a chance to showcase those skills in Ann Arbor? Or will he be a “what if” for Michigan fans?
“It’s a great problem to have, but it’s very stressful because you don’t want to make the wrong decision. I want to go where I’m at most peace and most comfortable, so I’m going to use as many days as I have left to make that decision.”
The way Lendeborg describes his situation, it would appear he can’t go wrong either way.
“I love Michigan. I love the idea of going (there) and developing. But the NBA is what everybody wants.
“So I’m dead in the middle now. It’s hard.”