Warriors Rookie Lendeborg Was 'Spooked' to Guard Doncic, Then Doncic Sat Out

Yaxel Lendeborg got his welcome to the NBA from an assistant coach, on his phone, before a preseason game. The Warriors rookie was told he would be guarding Luka Doncic on Tuesday night against the Lakers, admitted afterward that the assignment spooked him, and then watched the whole problem evaporate when Doncic was rested. His relief lasted exactly as long as the schedule allows: the Warriors open the season against the Lakers on October 21.

What did Vogel actually say to him?

Two things, the second worse than the first. Lendeborg told reporters he was sitting on his phone when Golden State assistant Frank Vogel came over and told him he was guarding Doncic that night, Fox News reports. His reaction, by his own account, was profane disbelief and a question about being thrown into the fire. Vogel’s follow-up, as Lendeborg retold it, was that nobody can stop Doncic anyway, so he should just do his best, USA Today’s For The Win reports. Coaching staffs usually dress an assignment like that up as trust. Vogel, to his credit and the rookie’s horror, dressed it as what it was: a test with no passing grade, only a survivable one.

Why give a rookie the hardest cover in the league?

Because that is what he was drafted to become. Lendeborg, the No. 11 pick, is 6-foot-9 and 241 pounds out of Michigan’s national championship program, Fox News reports, and his college reputation was built at the defensive end: two-time Defensive Player of the Year in the American Athletic Conference with UAB, then first-team all-defence in the Big Ten, the New York Post reports. He had also averaged 19 points a game across his previous three preseason outings, the Post reports. A staff that wants to know whether that defensive range translates buys the answer in October, when the cost of finding out is a preseason line in a box score. The same Warriors preseason has been an extended exercise in cheap information, from Dalen Terry’s 43 minutes on an Exhibit 10 deal to the ongoing question of where Kristaps Porzingis fits, and when.

What happened when the game actually started?

The assignment vanished. JJ Redick rested Doncic, the Warriors learned of it as their defensive plan met reality, and Lendeborg spent his night matched against Walker Kessler, the Lakers center making his own preseason debut, the New York Post reports. Golden State won 101-89. Lendeborg called the change a complete shift from what he had planned in his mind, which is the honest summary of most rookie weeks: the preparation is real, the opponent is hypothetical, and the education arrives anyway. Doncic has spent his career making veterans feel the way Lendeborg felt on Tuesday; he crossed Domantas Sabonis out of his shoe in this same preseason, a clip that presumably did not calm the rookie down when it crossed his feed.

Why did a non-event travel this far?

Because Lendeborg narrated it properly. Most players sand a moment like this down to media training. Lendeborg gave it back whole: the phone, the double take, the attempt to act cool, the admission that it failed. That candor is why a defensive assignment that never happened outperformed the game it was supposed to happen in, the same way Scottie Barnes laughing at his own warmup photograph this week turned a wardrobe slip into a day of coverage he controlled by captioning it first. Rookies are not supposed to be this good at the second job yet. He is.

When does the assignment come back?

On October 21, in Los Angeles, for real this time. The Warriors open the regular season against the Lakers, and Golden State’s own planning, as the Porzingis reporting has it, already leans on Lendeborg in a smaller starting group. The teams meet four times this season, the next on October 30, For The Win reports. Doncic will presumably play in the ones that count. Lendeborg has had his rehearsal for the feeling, if not for the player: the phone, the news, the spooked half hour, and then nothing. Next week he gets the version where Vogel’s second sentence is the whole scouting report, and the fire he was promised actually has someone standing in it.