Kurt Helin Thu, October 22, 2026 at 4:24 PM UTC · 3 min read About Our Ads Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement LOS ANGELES — It says something about how Steve Kerr and the Warriors feel about Yaxel Lendeborg that, in the season opener, they started him and gave him the Luka Doncic defensive assignment.
Lesson No. 1 for the rookie: Don't trash-talk Doncic. As the Slovenian himself said in his ESPN walk-off interview, "Everybody knows when somebody starts talking, you got a different me." Not only did Lendeborg pick up a technical, but also when he really got in Doncic's face, the Lakers went on a 13-4 run sparked by Doncic. And this happened.
That didn't stop Lendeborg from continuing his beef with Doncic after the game.
"I had a lot of respect for him, you know, just watching," Lendeborg said postgame. "I didn't really watch the NBA much, I just watched highlights, seeing him kill people all the time. But then, being in there firsthand, just watching all the whining and complaining, I lost all respect, man. Like, that was awful. Me getting frustrated, it's not about the foul call 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. That's just weak.
"So, it kind of threw me off for a little while because, like I said, I had so much respect for him. Gone, man. Gone."
Those comments came after Doncic spoke, and this is all Doncic said about it and the technical foul on Lendeborg.
"I mean, he was talking crazy," Doncic said. "But you know I wasn't trying to talk back. This season, not trying to get techs. So it's the first time that that was not a double tech because I didn't say nothing. So I'm working on it."
• Never change, Lendeborg. Don't go through Raymond Ritter's media training. Speak your mind.
• There are a lot of fans around the league who agree with Lendeborg about Doncic.
• It's tough to talk trash when your team is getting trashed. The Lakers pulled away in the second quarter when Doncic got hot — and Curry got cold, the Warriors are banged up and have no offensive creators to speak of outside of him — and that came when Lendeborg fired up Doncic.
• Lendeborg did a respectable job on Doncic, who shot just 1-of-5 when the rookie was the closest defender challenging the shot. The problem was that when the Warriors' defense focused and collapsed on Doncic, he found Walker Kessler rolling to the rim for one of his 10 dunks on the night.
• Lendeborg, 24, speaks for a generation of fans when he said, "I didn't really watch the NBA much, I just watched highlights." There are many, many who consume all their NBA info through social media clips and people on social media talking about the game. Nothing wrong with that, except the NBA's entire financial model is based on you tuning in to watch games. It's about television revenue (and ratings were up last season). It's a problem for Adam Silver and the league (and other sports leagues as well).
Source: Sports
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