LOS ANGELES — Matched up with Luka Doncic, Yaxel Lendeborg, the Warriors’ bold and brash rookie, learned at least one thing in his NBA debut.
“Being in there firsthand, just watching all the whining and complaining, I lost all respect, man,” Lendeborg said after Golden State’s 127-105 season-opening loss to the Lakers. “That was awful.”
The most entertaining part of a blowout loss for the Warriors was undoubtedly Lendeborg’s ongoing back-and-forth with the Lakers’ equally loud-mouthed superstar, whom the 24-year-old rookie said he once “had a lot of respect for him, just watching him. … I’d see him kill people all the time.”
Lendeborg finished with 12 points, four personal fouls and one technical in 29 minutes.
He often drew the defensive matchup with Doncic, who went off for a game-high 28 with nine free throws.
But Lendeborg’s biggest takeaway was all the Slovenian’s extracurriculars that came after the whistle.
“Like, me getting frustrated, it’s not about the foul getting called. It’s about him complaining the entire game,” Lendeborg said. “Then you get the foul called — congratulations, bro — and you talk to me like you did something great? That’s just weak. It kind of threw me off for a while. Because like I said, I had so much respect for him. Gone, man.”
Though Doncic only made it to the line nine times, Lendeborg said it felt like 30. Two of his four infractions came while guarding Doncic.
“He probably had three fouls that wouldn’t be called fouls in any other league in the world,” coach Steve Kerr said. “But it’s the NBA. … It was a frustrating night for him, but a lesson well-learned.”
Doncic mostly kept his talking on the court, merely saying afterward that the Warriors rookie was “talking crazy.” Lendeborg, on the other hand, was happy to get into the nitty gritty.
“I was telling him he sucks. ‘You can’t score on me. You talk and you can’t score on me.’ I said it the whole game,” Lendeborg said. “I said a couple cuss words. That’s why I got the technical. But I was letting him know, because he was laughing and talking all this because of one foul call.”
Lendeborg bit on one of Doncic’s pump fakes midway through the first half, and the two were off and running — their mouths, anyway. Doncic pointed and laughed. Lendeborg responded.
At one point, Lendeborg started putting both his hands behind his back when guarding Doncic.
“I tried my best,” he said. “I still got called.”
The back-and-forth continued for the remainder of the first half, hitting an inflection point after Lendeborg successfully defended Doncic on a step-back 3. He followed him back down the court, yapping all the way, until he was T’d up for the first time in his career.
Doncic returned the favor after banking in a half-court shot at the buzzer going into halftime.
Coach Steve Kerr said it was “kind of ridiculous” that Lendeborg was the only one to draw a technical in the exchange, calling it the “rookie treatment” — but also a “great welcome to the NBA.”
“I loved the back and forth. … They were jawing at each other. I think it was the words Yaxel chose that got him the T,” Kerr said, acknowledging that Doncic “kind of lured him in.”
Lendeborg looked at it differently, despite Doncic’s well-known proclivity for elevating his play when an opponent pokes the bear. The rest of the league will learn he feeds off it, too.
“I feel like it works for me, for sure. On the defensive end I feel like it worked,” Lendeborg said. “I know he has a reputation for that. That’s probably why the half-court shot went in. But I didn’t really see nothing else. I definitely thought that he was gonna do more than that.”
If we learned anything from Lendeborg’s NBA debut, the No. 11 overall pick may be the league’s No. 1 most captivating newcomer, possibly even a spiritual successor to Draymond Green.
Green, of course, loved it.
“Everybody’s gonna be like, ‘Ah, man, he shouldn’t talk to Luka, you should not talk to Luka,’ and I disagree with that s–t one thousand percent,” Green said. “You f–king gonna talk to somebody, you talk until you can’t f–king talk no more. And if he bust your ass, guess what, you play him again three more times and you go back at his ass again. …
“Everybody’s like, ‘Oh, man, the rookie learned his lesson.’ What’d he learn?”
Allow Lendeborg to answer that one.
“I got to see what the NBA’s like, man. A lot of flopping, a lot of foul baiting, a lot of praying to the ref,” Lendeborg said. “Interesting first game, for sure.”
