HONOLULU – Fewer than three months removed from leading the Warriors to a Las Vegas Summer League championship and taking home MVP, Yaxel Lendeborg found himself in new world during Sunday’s last-second preseason loss to the LA Clippers.
Vegas and Hawaii are different enough. Going from sharing the court with a group of other young players who either have little NBA experience or who are grinding through the G League, compared to being in a starting lineup with multiple players destined for the Hall of Fame, can make a player’s head spin. Lendeborg isn’t lost; he’s learning.
The lesson the Warriors want him to take from his NBA preseason debut is to be more aggressive. Steve Kerr stressed it after the Warriors’ 104-101 loss at the Stan Sheriff Center at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, as did Steph Curry, in their own positive ways.
“Yaxel was good,” Kerr said. “We need him to be more aggressive.”
Lendeborg started as the Warriors’ small forward in a lineup that featured veterans Curry, Draymond Green, Al Horford and fourth-year guard Brandin Podziemski. Four days removed from celebrating his 24th birthday during training camp, Lendeborg played 19 minutes and scored four points on 1-of-6 shooting. Kerr highlighted a specific play early in the third quarter as the perfect example he wants Lendeborg to learn from.
The strong and long forward ran down the floor like his coaches and teammates want him to. He out-jumped his defender to snatch a pass out of the air for what looked like two points from a layup, dunk or a trip to the free throw line.
Instead, Lendeborg tried to force a pass to Warriors center Charles Bassey, who was in close range next to him under the basket. Unselfishness can be applauded, but good intentions don’t always mean the best outcome.
The result was a Warriors turnover on one side and a Clippers 3-pointer on the other.
“That’s got to be a layup,” Kerr said. “We need Yaxel to have an aggressive scoring mentality and that’s something we want to work with him on, because he can make plays and he can score.”
Feel for the game is one of the reasons the Warriors were so high on Lendeborg going in the NBA draft. Though he’s a late bloomer who has paved a unique path to the pros, Lendeborg can see the game in the same light as Warriors teammate Jimmy Butler. He connects the game like the Warriors always have loved, and his passing ability was seen Sunday with three assists, including two instances where he perfectly played the pick-and-roll game with Bassey.
But with Butler sidelined for at least a few more months while recovering from a torn ACL, the Warriors need Lendeborg to unleash his inner beast. They need him to power through players and use his 6-foot-9, 241-pound frame as a scorer, just like he did in coming down with a game-high nine rebounds. They need his inner trust to ooze and know that if he needs to scale back, he’ll be told when to.
Al Horford won the opening tip and got the ball in the Warriors’ hands. It eventually wound up out of bounds from Lendeborg fighting for a rebound over multiple Clippers, but it remained in the Warriors’ favor. After being the Warriors’ indound passer, Lendeborg let a corner three fly in rhythm for the first points of the game.
Lendeborg took five more shots the rest of the game but couldn’t covert. The Warriors couldn’t care less and never want that to sway his confidence in the wrong direction.
“The balance for a young guy who’s expected to have an impact is to walk that fine line of aggressiveness but being OK knowing you’re going to make mistakes and not get deflated and to move on to the next play,” Curry said. “But we don’t want anything passive, and I think he’s been answering that call early. You saw the first possession him taking a shot when he’s open. Grabbing offensive rebounds, driving – I know he wants a couple of those possessions back, but we want him applying pressure on both ends of the floor, but especially offensively being able to create good offense for us.”
Curry even used himself as an example. Now entering Year 18, the all-time great once was a young first-round pick with a spotlight all over him. He still looks back at getting the space to make mistakes as one of the keys to his ultimate success.
“It’s not going to be perfect. He’s going to make mistakes,” Curry said. “I think that he can hopefully thrive off the fact that he can play through those, similar to what I was – well, more expectations as a team – but similar to my rookie year, I got to play through that stuff early.”
Summer league isn’t the preseason, and the preseason isn’t the regular season. Lendeborg is five training camp practices and one preseason game into his NBA career. The Warriors are gifting him the grace of learning from mistakes, and a more aggressive mindset being his biggest negative is a positive in its own right.
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