First-round draft pick Yaxel Lendeborg answers questions from reporters during a news conference where the Warriors introducing their draft picks Friday at Chase Center.
Lea Suzuki/S.F. Chronicle
Family members and girlfriend of first-round draft pick Yaxel Lendeborg gather for a portrait at Chase Center during a Warriors news conference Friday introducing their draft picks.
Lea Suzuki/S.F. Chronicle
First-round draft pick Yaxel Lendeborg answers questions from reporters during a news conference where the Warriors introducing their draft picks Friday at Chase Center.
Lea Suzuki/S.F. Chronicle
Second-round draft pick Lajae Jones, Warriors general manager Mike Dunleavy and first-round pick Yaxel Lendeborg stand for a portrait during an introductory news conference Friday at Chase Center.
Lea Suzuki/S.F. Chronicle
Yaxel Lendeborg arrived Friday. He stood on stage in the Bill King Interview Room at Chase Center, alongside second-round draft pick Lajae Jones, Golden State Warriors general manager Mike Dunleavy and radio broadcaster Tim Roye.
Lendeborg, the team’s first-round choice three days earlier, wore a black Warriors hat with a sparkly logo. His mom and sisters sat in the front row. Lendeborg answered questions with grace and candor, including suggesting he might have a chance to start as a rookie next season (easy now).
But Lendeborg also remembered the low moments on his improbable journey from non-recruit to No. 11 overall pick in the NBA draft. How he played video games all day, slept through classes in high school and demonstrated, well, no work ethic.
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And how his mom, Yissel Raposo, eventually helped steer him down the right path. Consider the blunt headline on the Players Tribune story he wrote in February: “How My Mom Saved My Life.”
Now they were in the House that Steph Built, in the interview room where Stephen Curry and Draymond Green routinely field postgame questions, savoring Lendeborg’s introductory news conference.
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“We’ve pretty much struggled our whole lives,” he said. “My mom had to have two, three jobs just to provide for the family. It’s tough for her. So seeing how hard she’s worked, how much resilience she showed, just flowed to me. Whenever I got down, I thought about what my mom is doing.”
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He didn’t always think about it that way. But Raposo had a heart-to-heart talk with him in 2019, during his senior year of high school. She gave him HELL (his all-caps), he wrote in the Players Tribune piece. She gave him THE TRUTH.
Lendeborg finally got the message. Raposo moved him to a different high school and his grades started to improve. Then she found a basketball camp for Dominican players in the New York/New Jersey area, which led to him landing the last spot on the team at Arizona Western, a community college in distant Yuma, Ariz.
He spent three seasons there — “Yuma was awful,” he said, “but the people I met there taught me so much” — two at Alabama-Birmingham and one season for the ages at Michigan. Lendeborg earned the honor of Big Ten Player of the Year, the Wolverines won the national championship and he became a lottery pick in the NBA draft.
There was an extra layer of emotion after Lendeborg’s selection, evident in his tears and her own on Tuesday night in New York, galvanized by Raposo’s diagnosis last year with appendix cancer.
“She’s doing great,” he said Friday. “She has a big-time surgery next month, like a 12-hour surgery. So hopefully that goes well and then we’ll be cancer-free afterward.”
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Raposo reflected on the “hard conversation” she had with her son in high school, the one he detailed in the Players Tribune. They sat in her car, outside his friend’s house, after a marathon video game session stretching six or seven hours.
That’s when she made an emotional plea for him to get his act together, including taking courses at a local community college so he could graduate from high school. Seeing her heartbreak, he wrote, “changed the trajectory of my entire life, in the blink of an eye.”
“I just told him, ‘You have to be good,’” she said, with daughter Yikary interpreting at times. “The talk we had was very serious, and it made him think about the whole thing. … When I moved him to another school, he changed. He started getting better grades, and that’s how he got to play basketball.”
Now he’s on the brink of playing basketball alongside Curry and Green, both four-time NBA champions. Lendeborg seems to bring what the Warriors need, a wing player with size (6-foot-9) and skills on both ends of the court.
He’s also not shy about sharing his opinion, as he illustrated when asked about his early conversations with head coach Steve Kerr.
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“He doesn’t normally like to play rookies as much, he has a history of that,” Lendeborg said. “But the way the team is looking now, I’m going to have a really good chance to play and maybe even start. So having that kind of hope definitely gives me extra motivation.”
Lendeborg might be overly optimistic about starting as a rookie, but playing time clearly is available while Jimmy Butler and Moses Moody recover from major knee injuries.
As for Jones, a 6-7 guard from Florida State taken No. 54 overall, he faces longer odds to stick in the NBA. He does bring the positional size Golden State covets, and his penchant for rebounding — 9.2 per game in junior college, 5.7 average last season for FSU — boosts his chances.
Jones also offered a telling reply when asked whether his head coach with the Seminoles, former Warriors assistant Luke Loucks, gave him any advice about playing for his new team.
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“Be in shape, play fast, knock down threes, set screens,” Jones said.
Moments later, he shared an amusing explanation of that last skill: “I can set a lot of barely legal screens to get my teammates open.”
How do you think the Warriors did on day 1 of the NBA draft?
Golden State selected Michigan’s Yaxel Lendeborg with the 11th pick and Florida State’s Lajae Jones with the 54th pick in the 2026 NBA Draft. What do you think of the choices?
john
Emeryville, CA
06/25/26
0
I just read he was making $5m in NIL, and even turned down a $7-9 million offer from Kentucky. That’s more than anone outside the top 10 draft picks this year will make. There’s real money in college now! He’s gonna be fine. I’m excited.
DAVID
El Sobrante, CA
06/25/26
0
I just watched the Florida State Guard LaJae Jones Season Highlights on YouTube. WOW …. I am impressed.
At first, when I didn’t see his name on any of the “big boards”, that covered the top 100 players in the draft, I was worried.
This guy is a Brandin Podziemski clone. But, he is a better defender. Jones is going to make it easy to trade Brandin Podziemski after his contract is extended. Why pay Brandin millions when we can have Jones on a 2nd round contract pay check, at least for the next two years?
Jon
El Cerrito, CA
06/24/26
0
Great pick! Yaxel was a late bloomer, immature young guy who needed to develop and prove himself over and over. He will be one of the more versatile players in the league, like a bigger Iguodala.. he can guard positions 1-5, score and distribute from anywhere on the court, good in fast break and half court. But most importantly, he’s very competitive and unselfish. He cares about winning, not his stats. I watched every Michigan game last year and he was consummate teammate, doing whatever needed to win. In the biggest games he stepped up with more scoring and big plays. But he was equally happy to take a backseat at other times while his teammates take over. He’ll improve any team and have a long , effective career, even if he’s not an all star.
Cricket
El Cerrito, CA
06/24/26
0
If Steve Kerr’s happy, I’m happy.
His name and body type don’t bode well for anything special…..and at 24 you have to wonder why he didn’t go pro sooner….not that exciting a pick….
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