<\/p>\n
First-round draft pick Yaxel Lendeborg answers questions from reporters during a news conference where the Warriors introducing their draft picks Friday\u00a0at Chase Center.<\/p>\n
Lea Suzuki\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
Family members and girlfriend of first-round draft pick Yaxel Lendeborg\u00a0gather for a portrait at Chase Center during a Warriors news conference\u00a0Friday introducing their draft picks.<\/p>\n
Lea Suzuki\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
First-round draft pick Yaxel Lendeborg answers questions from reporters during a news conference where the Warriors introducing their draft picks Friday\u00a0at Chase Center.<\/p>\n
Lea Suzuki\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
Second-round draft pick\u00a0Lajae Jones, Warriors general manager Mike\u00a0Dunleavy and first-round pick\u00a0Yaxel Lendeborg stand for a portrait\u00a0during an introductory news conference Friday at Chase Center.<\/p>\n
Lea Suzuki\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
Yaxel Lendeborg arrived Friday. He stood on stage in the Bill King Interview Room at Chase Center, alongside second-round draft pick Lajae Jones<\/a>, Golden State Warriors<\/a> general manager Mike Dunleavy<\/a> and radio broadcaster Tim Roye.<\/p>\n Lendeborg, the team\u2019s\u00a0first-round choice<\/a> 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).<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n And how his mom, Yissel Raposo, eventually helped steer him down the right path. Consider the blunt headline on the Players Tribune story<\/a> he wrote in February: \u201cHow My Mom Saved My Life.\u201d<\/p>\n Now they were in the House that Steph Built, in the interview room where Stephen Curry<\/a> and Draymond Green<\/a> routinely field postgame questions, savoring Lendeborg\u2019s introductory news conference.<\/p>\n San Francisco Chronicle Logo<\/p>\n Make us a Preferred Source to get more of our news when you search.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve pretty much struggled our whole lives,\u201d he said. \u201cMy mom had to have two, three jobs just to provide for the family. It\u2019s tough for her. So seeing how hard she\u2019s worked, how much resilience she showed, just flowed to me. Whenever I got down, I thought about what my mom is doing.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n He didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n He spent three seasons there\u00a0\u2014 \u201cYuma was awful,\u201d he said, \u201cbut the people I met there taught me so much\u201d\u00a0\u2014 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n There was an extra layer of emotion after Lendeborg\u2019s selection, evident in his tears and her own on Tuesday night in New York, galvanized by Raposo\u2019s diagnosis last year with appendix cancer.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s doing great,\u201d he said Friday. \u201cShe has a big-time surgery next month, like a 12-hour surgery. So hopefully that goes well and then we\u2019ll be cancer-free afterward.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Raposo reflected on the \u201chard conversation\u201d she had with her son in high school, the one he detailed in the Players Tribune. They sat in her car, outside his friend\u2019s house, after a marathon video game session stretching six or seven hours.\u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s 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, \u201cchanged the trajectory of my entire life, in the blink of an eye.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI just told him, \u2018You have to be good,\u2019\u201d she said, with daughter Yikary interpreting at times. \u201cThe talk we had was very serious, and it made him think about the whole thing. \u2026 When I moved him to another school, he changed. He started getting better grades, and that\u2019s how he got to play basketball.\u201d<\/p>\n Now he\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n He\u2019s also not shy about sharing his opinion, as he illustrated when asked about his early conversations with head coach Steve Kerr<\/a>.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cHe doesn\u2019t normally like to play rookies as much, he has a history of that,\u201d Lendeborg said. \u201cBut the way the team is looking now, I\u2019m going to have a really good chance to play and maybe even start. So having that kind of hope definitely gives me extra motivation.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Lendeborg might be overly optimistic about starting as a rookie, but playing time clearly is available while Jimmy Butler<\/a> and Moses Moody<\/a> recover from major knee injuries.<\/p>\n 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\u00a0\u2014 9.2 per game in junior college, 5.7 average last season for FSU\u00a0\u2014 boosts his chances.<\/p>\n Jones also offered a telling reply when asked whether his head coach with the\u00a0Seminoles, former Warriors assistant Luke Loucks, gave him any advice about playing for his new team.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cBe in shape, play fast, knock down threes, set screens,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n Moments later, he shared an amusing explanation of that last skill: \u201cI can set a lot of barely legal screens to get my teammates open.\u201d<\/p>\n How do you think the Warriors did on day 1 of the NBA draft?<\/p>\n Golden State selected Michigan\u2019s Yaxel Lendeborg with the 11th pick and Florida State\u2019s Lajae Jones with the 54th pick in the 2026 NBA Draft. What do you think of the choices?<\/p>\n john<\/p>\n Emeryville, CA<\/p>\n 06\/25\/26<\/p>\n 0<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n DAVID<\/p>\n El Sobrante, CA<\/p>\n 06\/25\/26<\/p>\n 0<\/p>\n I just watched the Florida State Guard LaJae Jones Season Highlights on YouTube. WOW …. I am impressed. 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?<\/p>\n Jon <\/p>\n El Cerrito, CA<\/p>\n 06\/24\/26<\/p>\n 0<\/p>\n 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\u2019s 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\u2019ll improve any team and have a long , effective career, even if he\u2019s not an all star. <\/p>\n Cricket<\/p>\n El Cerrito, CA<\/p>\n 06\/24\/26<\/p>\n 0<\/p>\n If Steve Kerr’s happy, I’m happy.<\/p>\n 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….<\/p>\n See More Responses<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"First-round draft pick Yaxel Lendeborg answers questions from reporters during a news conference where the Warriors introducing their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":762568,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,5552,354030,590,85,58049,275299],"class_list":["post-762567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golden-state-warriors","tag-mike-dunleavy","tag-nba","tag-sports","tag-steve-kerr","tag-yaxel-lendeborg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=762567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/762568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=762567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=762567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=762567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>
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\nAt 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.<\/p>\n