LOS ANGELES - By the end, Yaxel Lendeborg was fed up. By the time he'd exited the mental maze of playing against Luka Doncic, feeling his way around unfamiliar territory and encountering traps and treachery at every turn, he was verbally and visibly disgusted. Doncic grinned. He laughed. He clapped. He baited. All of it, Wednesday night, welcomed the 24-year-old Lendeborg to a league that officiates games much differently than college ball.
So after the Golden State Warriors got rolled by the Lakers 127-105 in the season opener in Los Angeles, Lendeborg sat at a postgame podium and unleashed. He used to watch Doncic on TV, Lendeborg said. He used to watch him kill defenders. He used to have "so much respect" for Doncic.
Gone.
"Being in there firsthand, and just watching all the whining and the complaining, I lost all respect, man," Lendeborg said. "Like, that was awful."
The air inside this cramped press-conference room vanished, vacuum-sealed, with the enormity of Lendeborg's words. This was a six-time All-NBA superstar and the league's reigning scorer he had just grappled with, and now was going at publicly. Doncic has thrived for years at worming his way inside defenders' heads with every foul-drawing wriggle, absorbing their rage, and vanquishing them with an array of step-back daggers. Conventional wisdom suggested this was not the bear to poke.
Lendeborg did not just poke. He jabbed.
"Me getting frustrated - it's not about, like, the foul being called," Lendeborg continued Wednesday. "It's about, like, him complaining the entire game. And then you get the foul called. Congratulations, bro. And then you talk to me like you did something great, bro? Come on, bro. That s- weak."
Their back-and-forth became the highlight of Wednesday's opener, in an otherwise ho-hum affair where Golden State caved against Los Angeles's size and off-the-dribble juice. Warriors veterans and coaches alike have been preaching to the massive 6-foot-9, 241-pound Lendeborg to rely more on his body than his hands in guarding on the perimeter, and especially against Doncic. So Lendeborg went at the Lakers superstar with aplomb, picking him up full-court, hanging onto his body and funneling Doncic into clear confusion and difficult looks by simply pulling his hands back.
Doncic got him at the end of the first half, when the Warriors were still hanging around. With a little over two minutes left in the first, he up-faked Lendeborg into drawing a foul. That drew verbal frustration from Lendeborg, and visible glee from Doncic. A minute later came an off-ball foul, Lendeborg getting a little handsy and Doncic selling the job. That drew a technical foul a minute later on Lendeborg, barking a few choice words at Doncic from across the floor after forcing him into a miss.
"I was telling him - he sucks!" Lendeborg said, postgame. "He can't score on me. You're talking, you can't score on me. I said it the whole game. I said a couple cuss words, obviously. That's why I got a technical, and all that. But I was letting him know. Because he was laughing, and talking all this, because of that one foul call. His only bucket on me was a banker from half-court."
The key, to all this: Lendeborg was actually right. Buried, yes, underneath the questionable optics of a 22-point loss that felt worse. But he held Doncic to 1-of-5 shooting on looks where Lendeborg was the clear and primary defender, according to clips reviewed by the Chronicle - the only make being an end-of-half heave that Doncic let Lendeborg know about considerably.
It was ultimately a test. Golden State will need Lendeborg to guard elite bigger scorers on the perimeter by necessity, for months, until Moses Moody and Jimmy Butler can return from injury. This was a welcome-to-the-league, do-your-best-kid matchup. Lendeborg did his best. And earned respect in his own locker room, at least.
Draymond Green was a keen defender.
"Everybody's going to be like, ‘Oh, man, he shouldn't talk to Luka! You should not talk to Luka! ' And I disagree with that s-, 1000%," Green told reporters postgame in the locker room. "You f- gon' talk to somebody, you talk until you can't f- talk no more. And if he busts your ass, guess what? You play him again three more times, and you go back at his ass again. And you see him a third time, and you go back at his ass again."
So, too, was head coach Steve Kerr, who said he "loved the back-and-forth" between Lendeborg and Doncic. And so was Stephen Curry, who smiled when asked about Lendeborg Wednesday.
"I love confidence," Curry said. "I love that care and passion. And from what I've seen from him, it's about just playing basketball. It's not about anything else other than the competitiveness. So, he's setting the table for himself to have to show up, and I like that.
"The nature of the game - whether you do it in between your ears or you let it out, I know he'll be able to back it up."
Lendeborg's postgame grousing, then, was much a test of himself as it was an attempted evisceration of Doncic. Put it all on the line verbally, and he'll have no choice but to back it up. Green, who Lendeborg previously told the Chronicle had become his "vet," tested Lendeborg through weeks of training camp. Go at him, Green said, and Lendeborg responds. Yell at him, Green said, and Lendeborg responds.
The Warriors need Lendeborg to respond, now. Golden State will see Doncic again, hosting the Lakers later in October. They will see multiple elite perimeter scorers to start the season, from Phoenix's Devin Booker Saturday to Minnesota's Anthony Edwards Monday.
A frustrating night, as Kerr put it postgame. But the head coach told Lendeborg mid-game that better days are ahead.
"This game for sure gave me a lot of confidence into being able to guard superstars," Lendeborg said postgame. "I'm looking to learn a lot more about the foul-baiting, as soon as possible.
"I was very, like, worried, coming into the game, thinking (Doncic) was gonna just get all his points on me, la da da," the rookie continued. "But, it was eye-opening for me. I think I did a great job defending him. So I definitely look forward to getting more matchups. Hopefully, not as foul-baiting as this guy."
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There’s more to San Francisco with the Chronicle. Subscribe today for just 25¢.This article originally published at Why Warriors rookie Yaxel Lendeborg said he ‘lost all respect' for Lakers' Luka Doncic.