{"id":704825,"date":"2026-04-08T07:41:40","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T07:41:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/704825\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T07:41:40","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T07:41:40","slug":"michigan-forward-yaxel-lendeborg-puts-health-on-the-line-for-national-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/704825\/","title":{"rendered":"Michigan forward Yaxel Lendeborg puts health on the line for national championship"},"content":{"rendered":"

INDIANAPOLIS \u2014 As the song \u201cOne Shining Moment\u201d began to fill Lucas Oil Stadium, Michigan\u2019s Yaxel Lendeborg<\/a> tried his best to maintain focus while answering the rapid-fire questions coming from the reporters surrounding him. <\/p>\n

But Lendeborg abruptly stopped speaking as the video reached its concluding sequence, which began with the NCAA tournament title game opening tip and ended with the Wolverines<\/a> on the podium.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was crazy,\u201d said Lendeborg, his arms draped around teammates Trey McKenney and Roddy Gayle Jr. \u201cThat was really crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

On a night Lendeborg\u2019s team celebrated its first national championship in 37 years, a sprained ankle and bruised knee kept the 70,000 fans in attendance from seeing Michigan\u2019s best player at the top of his game. But despite being hobbled, Lendeborg deserves credit for putting his health on the line to help his team conclude a 37-win season with a title.<\/p>\n

\u201cI played terrible, but you know, I still had fun and we won the championship,\u201d Lendeborg, 23, said on the court following the win. \u201cI know I get a long break after this, so I\u2019m going to do the best I can to recover.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lendeborg\u2019s play fell far short of his performance for most of this season that earned him Big Ten Player of the Year and consensus first-team All-America honors. He missed nine of 13 shots, including all five 3-point attempts, and grabbed just two rebounds, willing himself to 13 points and a block.<\/p>\n

After air-balling a 3-pointer in the second half, Lendeborg left the game, pulling his jersey out of his shorts in obvious frustration.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t get any lift, couldn\u2019t make any moves and missed some easy bunnies,\u201d said Lendeborg, who played a team-high 36 minutes. \u201cMy leg hurts real bad. It hurts right now. I felt like I was hurting the team, but I did the best I could.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"YaxelYaxel Lendeborg was far from his best Monday, but he made enough plays to cap his All-America season with a national championship, Michigan\u2019s first since 1989. <\/p>\n

Patrick Smith\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

At least Lendeborg, known to teammates as Dominican \u2018Bron, had a reason for his poor shooting. The execution on offense for both teams? Let\u2019s just say video showing the offense of this game isn\u2019t worth preserving, as UConn shot 30.9% to Michigan\u2019s 38.2%.<\/p>\n

Winning a championship concludes an incredible journey for Lendeborg who, at his best, demonstrates all the tools necessary for NBA stardom. He started his college career at Arizona Western (earning second-team junior college All-America honors) and then spent two seasons at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he led the NCAA with 26 double-doubles last year.<\/p>\n

As the top player in the NCAA transfer portal following his second season at UAB, Lendeborg chose Michigan, which pooled its resources to pay top dollar for four players who wound up in the starting lineup. Credit the Wolverines players with buying into a system where a group of individuals who could have been the main guy at other programs made sacrifices in pursuit of a title.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose Twitter warriors, they\u2019re gonna hate the way we did it,\u201d Lendeborg said. \u201cWe did all we could; the mercenaries showed up, and now we\u2019re national champions. So, it doesn\u2019t matter what anybody says.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michigan guard Nimari Burnett is more than prepared for Final Four spotlight \u2013 AndscapeRead now<\/a><\/p>\n

What you should say about Lendeborg: He\u2019s extremely tough to even take the court after being injured early in the national semifinal against Arizona, a game in which he logged just 14 minutes. And, in the words of Michigan head coach Dusty May, \u201cplayed the second half like a 38-year-old at the YMCA.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prior to coming to Michigan, there were questions about Lendeborg\u2019s maturity. He even admits to being \u201ca goofy kid,\u201d which is clear to anyone who\u2019s watched his social media videos and saw him wield a belt after each of the Final Four wins.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve challenged Yax to think about how he\u2019s perceived,\u201d May said after Michigan\u2019s Elite Eight win last week. \u201cWe didn\u2019t expect Yax to have the best practice habits because once he got here, he didn\u2019t have them. But we also tried to pull every single day and just get him a little bit closer, and we didn\u2019t judge him.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to the coaches not judging him, his teammates fully embraced Lendeborg.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, the whole University of Michigan welcomed me with open arms,\u201d Lendeborg said Monday. \u201cAnd shout out to Will [Tschetter], Roddy [Gayle Jr.], Nimari [Burnett], and L.J. [Cason]. They could have easily gotten hurt or something because the new guys were coming in, stealing their minutes, stealing their points, but they didn\u2019t care. All they cared about was winning, and look where it led us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Where it led Michigan was to the school\u2019s first national championship since 1989, with Lendeborg\u2019s play this season improving his status in the NBA draft. Some projections have Lendeborg as a lottery pick. A recent ESPN draft board<\/a> had Lendeborg at No. 12.<\/p>\n

Lendeborg put all of those projections at risk playing on the injured leg. <\/p>\n

\u201cI hope I didn\u2019t mess anything up more than it already was,\u201d Lendeborg said \u201cIt took a lot to get on the court. \u2026 I was dealing with a lot of mental issues today. These guys all leaned in on me and helped me out, helped me dig myself out of the hole and just continue to keep fighting.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Lendeborg, the health risks leading to \u201cOne Shining Moment\u201d proved to be worth it, even while not being physically capable of being the best version of himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did the best I could,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is the best year of my life. I\u2019m super grateful to be here and to win a championship.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jerry Bembry is a senior writer at Andscape. His bucket list items include being serenaded by Lizz Wright and watching the Knicks play a MEANINGFUL NBA game in June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"INDIANAPOLIS \u2014 As the song \u201cOne Shining Moment\u201d began to fill Lucas Oil Stadium, Michigan\u2019s Yaxel Lendeborg tried…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":704826,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3723],"tags":[7,217,231,772,1544],"class_list":{"0":"post-704825","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-college-basketball","10":"tag-ncaa","11":"tag-ncaa-basketball","12":"tag-ncaab"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116367963230936322","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=704825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704825\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/704826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=704825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=704825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=704825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}