Yaxel Lendeborg’s Honest Steph Curry Admission Lights Up Warriors Twitter on Draft Night
Yaxel Lendeborg got picked by the Warriors at No. 11 in the 2026 NBA Draft, walked to the podium, and immediately told the world he used to hate Steph Curry.
That was the moment. The honesty was something else.
“I’m a big Kyrie guy. So I used to hate Steph Curry,” Lendeborg said at the podium when asked about his new teammate. The 23-year-old Michigan wing did not soften it. He went straight at the answer.
The context helps. Lendeborg was 13 years old in 2016, the year Kyrie Irving hit one of the most famous shots in NBA Finals history to bury the Warriors in Game 7. That was the formative basketball moment of his pre-teen years. He grew up wearing Kyrie jerseys and arguing with his friends about which guard was actually the best in the league. The Warriors were the bad guys.
Now he is one.
The clip went everywhere within minutes. “Draymond about to knock him out” was the most popular reply on Twitter. “Zero PR training” got just as much traction. The Warriors Twitter accounts had to scramble to get out of the way of the moment before it spiraled.
Here is the thing. Lendeborg is not the first young player to talk about hating Curry growing up. Plenty of players who came up in the 2010s rooted for whoever was playing the Warriors. Curry himself has joked about it. The difference is that most of those players save the admission for a podcast appearance two years into their career, after the relationships are built and the media training is locked in.
Lendeborg said it in front of an international audience three minutes after being drafted by the franchise. That is either incredibly authentic or incredibly bad timing, depending on where you sit.
To his credit, he followed it up well. Lendeborg said he had already met Curry while attending the Warriors’ postseason play-in game against the Clippers, and the two had a real conversation during an in-person workout with Golden State. He called Curry “a very great guy” and said the chance to be on the same team is a “full circle” moment.
The basketball fit is interesting. Lendeborg is a 6-foot-9 wing with playmaking skills and length. He should slot into the Warriors’ rotation as a long, versatile defender who can switch across multiple positions and attack closeouts. Pairing that profile next to Curry, Jimmy Butler, and Draymond Green gives him exactly the development environment he needs.
The bigger story for Golden State is what this draft pick represents. The Warriors are not in title contention next year. Curry turns 39 in March. The team needs young, athletic, ascending talent to bridge the next era, and Lendeborg fits the profile better than anything else the front office could have grabbed at 11.
The Kyrie comment will follow him for at least a season. The basketball, if he plays well, will follow him for a career. That is the trade he is now making.
Warriors fans, for what it is worth, mostly thought it was funny. Curry will too. Draymond will use it as the first chirp of every preseason scrimmage. Welcome to Golden State, kid.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
