{"id":815271,"date":"2026-07-21T00:39:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T00:39:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/815271\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T00:39:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T00:39:20","slug":"warriors-yaxel-lendeborg-models-his-game-after-lebron-james-talks-nba-legends-impact-on-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/815271\/","title":{"rendered":"Warriors&#8217; Yaxel Lendeborg Models His Game After LeBron James, Talks NBA Legend&#8217;s Impact on Him"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-bp_small__body__article__medium css-1vqr2el\">As the Golden State Warriors hope and pray that LeBron James decides to sign with them this offseason, one of their offseason additions is already modeling his game after the superstar.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-bp_small__body__article__medium css-1vqr2el\">&#8220;I definitely would have to go with LeBron,&#8221; rookie Yaxel Lendeborg told\u00a0<a class=\"MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-inherit MuiLink-root MuiLink-underlineAlways MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-bp_small__ui__link__medium_strong css-lu48cp\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/7454816\/2026\/07\/20\/yaxel-lendeborg-warriors-rookies-nba-summer-league\/?unlocked_article_code=1.zFA.iUMK.4CjtvI_15gKV&amp;source=athletic_user_shared_gift_article_copylink&amp;smid=url-share-ta\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">Nick Friedell<\/a> of The Athletic when asked if there&#8217;s any player he&#8217;s studied in particular while growing his own game. &#8220;He&#8217;s been doing that at the highest level since he was, like, 10. And he&#8217;s had so much adversity on his back. He&#8217;s the reason why I don&#8217;t believe that pressure&#8217;s real. He said it in an interview, and just the way he said it, it&#8217;s, like, maybe it really isn&#8217;t real. Maybe I&#8217;m just playing myself with this. He really motivates me.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-bp_small__body__article__medium css-1vqr2el\">He&#8217;s also <a class=\"MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-inherit MuiLink-root MuiLink-underlineAlways MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-bp_small__ui__link__medium_strong css-lu48cp\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcsportsbayarea.com\/nba\/golden-state-warriors\/yaxel-lendeborg-lebron-james-recruitment-pitch\/1949840\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">made his pitch<\/a> for James to join the Warriors. <\/p>\n<p class=\"MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-bp_small__body__article__medium css-1vqr2el\">&#8220;My pitch is, man, I know you don&#8217;t like rookies that much, man, but I&#8217;m not the average rookie, you know, and I would love to learn under you, man,&#8221; he said last week during a B\/R livestream with NBA reporters Marc Stein and Jake Fischer. &#8220;So I mean, if you&#8217;re looking to play with one of the greatest\u2014the greatest shooter of all time and a close friend of yours [Stephen Curry], Draymond [Green], it&#8217;ll be great to come to the Warriors, and we&#8217;ll be glad to have you.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-bp_small__body__article__medium css-1vqr2el\">The jury is still out on what James will decide. But he certainly has a huge fan in Lendeborg.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the Golden State Warriors hope and pray that LeBron James decides to sign with them this offseason,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":815272,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-815271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=815271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/815272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=815271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=815271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=815271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}