On his podcast this week, Draymond Green said “The Golden State Warriors has found the next face of the franchise,” and he meant rookie Yaxel Lendeborg.
Lendeborg starts his first NBA game in Wednesday’s opener against the Lakers. Whether he can carry a franchise after Stephen Curry is a fair question, and the evidence so far doesn’t answer it yet.
Lendeborg Has Earned the Starting Job
The case for Lendeborg is real. Over five preseason games he totaled 78 points, 37 rebounds and 20 assists in about 23 minutes a night.
He shot 29-of-51 from the field, and after a 4-point debut he scored at least 17 in each of his last four games, per ESPN’s game log. His best night was 23 points, 10 rebounds, six assists, two steals and one block in 24 minutes against Sacramento.
The résumé goes back further than October. He was a consensus first-team All-American and Big Ten Player of the Year on Michigan’s 2026 title team, then won Summer League MVP. Physically, he stands 6-foot-9 with a 7-foot-4 wingspan.
Green’s argument is about more than production. He pointed to Lendeborg staying in the stands signing autographs at open practice until Steve Kerr had to go get him, and Green said that’s what Curry would do.
He also said Curry will always be the face of the franchise and that he wasn’t trying to pile pressure on the rookie.
The Upside Bet Was Somebody Else
The best case against comes from the Warriors themselves. ESPN’s Anthony Slater reported that Golden State had Lendeborg and Arizona guard Brayden Burries level on its final board, and that team sources indicated they would have drafted the 20-year-old combo guard for his upside had he still been available.
Milwaukee took Burries 10th. Golden State then took Lendeborg at No. 11 because, in Slater’s words, he fit their immediate timeline and the urgency of Curry’s final seasons.
That is a description of a player picked to win now, and it fits his age. Lendeborg turned 24 on September 30. A player who will be in his late 20s whenever Curry retires is a different bet from a 20-year-old guard.
The minutes he’s getting also need context. The Warriors are short on wings while they wait on Butler and Moses Moody to return from lengthy rehabs for serious knee injuries.
The job opened partly because of the injury report. None of that takes away from how he played, but it does explain how fast he got the starting spot.
The jump shot isn’t proven either. He made 7-of-16 threes in the preseason, a good rate on volume too small to mean much, and 13-of-20 at the line.
A future face of the franchise needs a jumper defenses have to respect over 82 games, not five.
A Starter Now, a Successor Not Yet
SES’s verdict: Lendeborg is the likeliest homegrown cornerstone on this roster, and the starting role he won is deserved. But “next face of the franchise” goes beyond what five preseason games and a 24-year-old’s draft profile can support.
The front office that drafted him said, through Slater’s reporting, that it would have taken someone else for upside.
To be fair, the Warriors were never lukewarm on him. Tim Kawakami of The San Francisco Standard reported in June that one team source had only Cam Boozer clearly above Lendeborg, as relayed by NBC Sports Bay Area.
Even so, rating him highly isn’t the same as seeing a superstar ceiling, and a roughly even ranking against a younger guard points to a high floor, not certain stardom.
Two things would change this verdict. One is whether he holds his starting minutes and usage once Butler is back. The other is whether his three-point volume and accuracy hold up through the winter.
If he is still a 15-point, 40-minute-a-night fixture on a playoff team in March, Green will have been early rather than wrong. Until then, the Warriors have a very good rookie, and that’s all the evidence shows so far.
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