The Lakers took down the Warriors on Wednesday night, 127-105, and Luka Dončić starred—which is no surprise. The Slovenian superstar enters this season with MVP expectations in Los Angeles and kicked off the campaign with a strong night, scoring 28 points to go with eight rebounds and seven assists. He put his stamp on the contest with usual flair, regularly threading fancy passes to new teammate Walker Kessler in pick-and-roll action and draining a half-court buzzer-beater to send the Lakers into the locker room with a 14-point lead.
Dončić also engaged in some delightful on-court antics with Golden State rookie Yaxel Lendeborg that drove the Dubs wild and led to a heated series of postgame quotes.
Lendeborg, a lottery pick out of Michigan, was given the unenviable task of guarding Dončić in his first NBA regular-season game. It’s a hard enough assignment given the star’s status as an all-world scorer with a preternatural feel for drawing fouls. Then Lendeborg started talking to Dončić—and everyone knows you don’t do that. One of Dončić’s defining traits is how much trash talk invigorates him. The best version of Dončić is the one who gets fired up because an opponent or a fan starts going back and forth with him.
Still, Lendeborg wasn’t going to back down and the two went at each other for much of the first half. Lendeborg wound up getting called for a tech at one point as they jawed; his frustration was written all over his face that Dončić wasn’t T’d up, too. Then a few cheap fouls were called on Lendeborg as he got physical with the Lakers star and he got even more worked up. The entire situation, per usual, fueled Dončić and his buzzer-beating heave came after all the theatrics. Naturally, Dončić had a massive grin on his face directed right at Lendeborg the entire time and made sure to point at the rookie.
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It was all tremendous theater. A fired-up Luka is one of the most entertaining athletes in sports and it’s incredibly fun to watch a rookie, of all people, refuse to back down. It’ll make for one heck of a “welcome to the NBA” story for Lendeborg to tell down the line; he finished his debut with 12 points on 5-for-11 shooting.
It also led to some heated postgame comments from the young Michigan product as the Warriors collectively endorsed his willingness to engage with the Lakers star.
Lendeborg gave several blunt quotes about battle with Dončić
In what we can only hope will be the first of countless entertaining postgame interviews, Lendeborg continued his trash talk despite the loss while speaking to reporters at the podium.
First he was asked what he was saying to Dončić when he received the technical and didn’t hesitate to share.
“I was telling him he sucks!” Lendeborg exclaimed. “He can’t score on me. ‘You talking, you can’t score on me.’ I said it the whole game. I said a couple cuss words, that’s why I got the technical and all that. But I was letting him know because he was laughing and talking all this because of that one foul call, and his only bucket (on me) was a banker from half court.
“I know that it’s a team sport. He had 28 on us as a team. Me, I took my matchup personally. Tried not to get caught on the fouls. Tried my best. I was thinking about playing him with my hands behind my back to see if that worked. Probably would have still got a foul call.”
And it may not seem it but Lendeborg was right—he was giving Dončić a tough time. The Lakers superstar still got his but his one-on-one matchup data, per ESPN, says he was 1-for-6 from the field when taking shots guarded by the Dubs rookie.
Reflecting on his first matchup with Dončić at large, Lendeborg said he lost respect for the superstar.
“Lot of flopping, lot of foul-baiting, a lot of praying to the ref, man,” Lendeborg said. “I had a lot of respect for him. Just watching him. I didn’t watch the NBA much, I just watched the highlights, seeing him kill people all the time. But being in there first hand, watching all the whining and complaining, I lost all respect for him. Me getting frustrated, it’s not about the foul being called. It’s about him complaining the entire game. And then you get the foul call, congratulations bro, and then you talk to me like you did something great, bro? Come on. It kind of threw me off for a while because, like I said, I had so much respect for him.”
On Dončić’s end, he merely noted the young wing was “talking crazy” during his own postgame availability.
“He was talking crazy,” Dončić said. “I wasn’t trying to talk back. This season, I’m trying not to get techs. That was the first time it was not a double tech because I didn’t say nothing. I’m working on it, but as you see I think it worked great.”
The Warriors loved the energy from the young buck
The Warriors are a veteran-heavy squad and it wouldn’t have been too surprising if the key figures of the franchise chided the 23-year-old Lendeborg for an emotional showing. But, to the contrary, everyone praised him for it, from Steve Kerr to Draymond Green.
“I loved the back and forth,” Kerr stated to reporters. “Yaxel’s a competitor. This was a great welcome to the NBA game for him. Having to guard Luka, obviously as tough to guard as anybody in the world, having to learn about all the little tricks that exist in the NBA. He probably had three fouls that probably wouldn’t be called fouls in any other league in the world but it’s the NBA. He’s gotta learn this stuff. It was his first game, he’s an unbelievable young guy, great talent. It was a frustrating night for him but a lesson well learned and he’ll get better from here.”
Green, who declared Lendeborg the future face of the Warriors’ franchise before the season, heartily endorsed what the rookie showed in his first game. Unsurprisingly.
“Everybody’s going to be like, ‘Aw, man, you do not talk to Luka. You should not talk to Luka.’ I disagree with that s--- one thousand percent,” Green said emphatically. “You f---ing go talk to somebody, you talk until you can’t f---ing talk no more. If he busts your ass, guess what? You play him again three more times and you go back at his ass again. You see him the third time? You go back at his ass again... Everyone will say the rookie learned his lesson. What he learn? The next time he see him, go at his ass again... When I lose respect for a guy is when you start talking to someone and you realize, ‘Oh, s---, I’m in a battle’ and then you stop. You keep going.”
What a great show. We can only hope it’s the dawn of a budding rivalry between Lendeborg and Dončić. We should find out soon, too; the Warriors and Lakers play again next Friday in NBA Cup play.
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