Yaxel Lendeborg Scored 37 Without Curry or Green. He Hit 30 Once in 112 College Games.
Stephen Curry sat out Sunday night with right knee management. Draymond Green sat out with his low back. Golden State beat the Clippers 124-112 anyway, because a 24-year-old rookie nobody outside the Bay Area could have named six weeks ago scored 37 points.
Yaxel Lendeborg went 13-of-19 from the field, 6-of-11 from three and 5-of-6 at the line in 34 minutes, with six assists. The NBA’s own account noted it was the most points by a Warriors rookie in a single game since Curry in 2010, when Curry put up 42 against Portland on April 14 of his first season.
Here is the number that should stop you: ESPN reported Lendeborg reached 30 points once in 112 college games.
Steve Kerr did not see this coming either
“We knew he was a good shooter,” Kerr said afterward, per ESPN. “I didn’t expect what I saw tonight.” He also said, of Lendeborg’s impact on the roster, “It changes everything.”
Kerr has been careful about the ceiling talk while saying the quiet part anyway. Lendeborg “doesn’t know the NBA game yet,” he said, and “the game is still really fast for him.” That is a coach describing a player averaging 22.3 points, 7.3 rebounds and 3.7 assists through seven NBA games, per NBA.com.
The part that tells you who Lendeborg is came after the buzzer. He hit a 27-foot step-back with 6:36 left to reach 37, and De’Anthony Melton and Will Richard started telling him he was three points from 40. He fired three straight misses, the Clippers ran off 13 unanswered to cut the lead to eight, and Kerr took him out.
“I’ve never been a stat chaser in my life,” Lendeborg said, per NBC Sports Bay Area. “Falling into peer pressure like I did just now was pretty much bad on my part. Next time, I definitely won’t do that again.”
A rookie who just scored the most points by a Warriors first-year player in 16 years spent his media session apologizing for the four minutes he chased 40. That is the tell.
The path here was not normal
Lendeborg is 6-foot-9 and 247 pounds and went 11th overall in the 2026 draft at 23, which made him one of the older players picked in the first round. He played three years of junior college, then UAB, then a final season at Michigan.
Players on that route are supposed to be rotation pieces. Instead he has a 31-point, 12-rebound, six-assist night against Denver on October 26, a 26-point game against Phoenix on October 24 with six made threes, and another 26 against Minnesota on October 28. He also had an 18-point, 13-rebound double-double in his second NBA game.
CBS Sports reported that through his first five games he had 113 points, 46 rebounds and 20 assists, and that no player had posted 100-plus points with 45-plus rebounds in his first five games since Shaquille O’Neal in 1992. That is a single-outlet claim, so treat it as reported rather than settled.
What it means for a team that started 0-3
Golden State is 4-3 and has won four straight after opening the season with three losses. Melton added 21 on Sunday, Brandon Williams had 17 off a bench that scored 40, and Brandin Podziemski went for 17 points, eight rebounds and eight assists. The Clippers fell to 1-5 behind Rui Hachimura’s 24.
The problems are visible. CBS counted 18 turnovers over his previous four games, and Kerr has pointed at his defense and his reads against double teams as the work ahead.
Curry and Green are expected back Monday night when Phoenix visits Chase Center for the second half of a back-to-back, which is the first real test of what this team looks like with all three on the floor. Gui Santos left Sunday’s game with knee tendinitis and will be reevaluated.
Golden State spent the last two years looking for a player who could carry a possession when Curry was off the floor. They may have drafted one at No. 11 and not known it until the last week of October.
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.
