Thirty-one points, 12 rebounds, six assists: that was Yaxel Lendeborg’s line in Denver as the Warriors got their first win. Stephen Curry called him “kind of the full package.”
Four games is not enough to crown anyone. It is enough to ask whether this is a real breakout or a hot week, and that is a fair question, because he has scored in double figures in each of his first four games while the team started 0-3.
The Production Comes From Repeatable Things
The best argument for Lendeborg is not the 31 points. It is where they came from. He missed seven of his eight 3s but dominated the second half with a parade of powerful downhill drives through Aaron Gordon, Nikola Jokić or whoever the Nuggets put in front of him. A rookie who scores 31 while missing nearly every jumper is not living off a hot shooting night.
The free throws say the same. He has 31 free-throw attempts through four games, and it is not a one-game spike: in just his second career game, against the Grizzlies, he went to the line 12 times. Getting to the line is about the steadiest skill a scorer can have.
Steve Kerr’s usage points the same way. Lendeborg orchestrated the offense late in Denver while Curry and Draymond Green rested, and finished with a game-high plus-27. Kerr told ESPN’s Anthony Slater that the Warriors put the ball in his hands at every key moment, and added, “He’s going to be a guy who closes games.” Coaches with title hopes don’t hand rookies late-game possessions to be nice.
The Skeptics Are Right About the Jumper
The best argument against him is the shot. He is shooting 45% from the field and 34.6% from three, and he went 1-of-8 from deep in his best game. Teams that wall off the paint and dare him to shoot will test him in a way four October games have not.
The Denver game also came against a weak defense. The Nuggets looked flimsy for most of the night, and Denver fell to 1-2. His debut was a modest one in a blowout loss to the Lakers, with 12 points and three rebounds.
Defense is the part Kerr has been least happy with. After the Phoenix loss, Kerr called his weak-side awareness “very poor”. The on-ball work has been better: in the opener, Luka Dončić made just 1-of-6 field goal attempts when the rookie was his primary defender. Help defense is the skill that has to catch up.
His age cuts both ways. Lendeborg is a 24-year-old rookie who came out of a long college career. That helps explain why he looks ready now. It is also a reason not to project a big leap from here.
The Breakout Is Real
Lendeborg is a genuine breakout rookie, and the skeptics’ case is about how high his ceiling goes, not whether the start is real. The numbers are loud: his 87 points and 37 rebounds make him, per OptaSTATS, the fourth rookie since 1985-86 to reach 85 points and 35 rebounds through four career games, after Patrick Ewing, David Robinson and Shaquille O’Neal.
What convinces us is less the totals than the skills behind them: getting downhill, drawing fouls, rebounding, making passes and guarding the ball. Those don’t depend on shooting luck, and they don’t disappear when a team scouts him better.
Expecting 21.8 points a game for the full season would be the mistake. Defenses will sag off him until he proves he can shoot, so his scoring will probably drop toward something less historic.
His role will not drop with it. Kerr has already used him to close a game with Curry and Green on the bench, and a 1-3 team trying to win now has no reason to take that job back from him.
Source: Anthony Slater of ESPN
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