DENVER – The questions come in all shapes and all sizes, by text and microphone and the voice of the Warriors' Yaxel Lendeborg. He wants to know. He does not stop. The questions reflect something growing in Golden State, the beginning of a new generation taking root.
How does Stephen Curry stay conditioned? How has Jimmy Butler mastered his rocker-step? How can one earn the respect of the veterans? Lendeborg goes everywhere for the answers, inside the organization and out. After Golden State's blowout win over Denver on Monday night, the rookie even went straight to national television, using a postgame Peacock interview as a chance for him to interview Hall of Famers Carmelo Anthony, Tracy McGrady and Vince Carter.
"Do you guys have any advice, like, just for me in general, just to try to keep going and things I gotta work on?" Lendeborg asked with a headset on. "Anything you guys see that I don't see?"
He texted a version of the same question to Curry and Draymond Green in early October at the end of Golden State's Hawaii trip, coming away disappointed in himself. Lendeborg entered that game timid. He exited with four points. He didn't want to "mess up" the Curry-Green dynamic, as he said. Their responses?
"They pretty much just gave me free roam," Lendeborg said Monday, describing Curry and Green's responses. "So, they helped me out. And from there, I just vowed to be a little more aggressive, each night."
This version of Lendeborg Monday night – a bulldozing, unstoppable point forward with the "strength of an ox," as Steve Kerr put it postgame – was an entirely new version from the Lendeborg in Hawaii, and even the Lendeborg in Phoenix on Saturday night. Through four games, he is absorbing at a rate that no rookie has ever shown in Kerr's 13-year career at the helm of the Warriors. It was enough Monday to completely and utterly dominate the second half of a game against the three-time league Most Valuable Player in Nikola Jokic, and win a matchup with vaunted Nuggets veteran Aaron Gordon so thoroughly that Gordon was eventually tossed (for contesting an illegal screen on Denver teammate Christian Braun).
Gordon didn't dance around any subtlety, asked on Lendeborg postgame.
"Yaxel has an opportunity to be special in this league, man," Gordon, a 13-year NBA vet, told the Chronicle. "Just, all the tools, his size, his strength, he has the mentality. He's really good, man. He's ready. It's cool to see Steve Kerr empower him. They got a good one."
The shocking reality was that nobody within on a perennial Western Conference contender could stop a 24-year-old rookie playing his fourth NBA game. He head-hunted Jokic at the rim. He banged with Gordon to draw fouls. He flew in from the weak-side for dunks, and created second-half perimeter looks for others that blew open a 134-114 win over the Nuggets.
And he did all this – 31 points, 12-of-13 on free throws, 12 rebounds, six assists – without having his touch, finishing 1-of-8 on threes and yanking his hands through his hair after multiple clanks off rim.
"And," Green grinned postgame, "he dominated."
Ask around, and Lendeborg has everything. All the tools, as Gordon said himself. He can shoot, with the willingness to make defenders step up off the dribble. He can dribble, with a crafty enough bag to get to the lane at will as a 6-foot-9 ballhandler. He can guard the ball, visibly frustrating Gordon (who finished with seven points on 2-of-10 shooting) on multiple occasions.
But his most valuable tool, at the moment? His curiosity. Lendeborg asks questions, a young man whose brain frequently funnels out words at speeds his mouth can barely keep up with. And then he listens.
"That's a skill set," Curry told reporters postgame. "To have confidence to know you don't know everything, but still go out and play with confidence and not be afraid to make mistakes, it's hard to do. Especially in this locker room, this franchise, that has the history we do."
Lendeborg has listened, most notably, to Kerr, a head coach who's taken his share of flak in a fading dynasty for the inability to properly mesh with 2021 No. 7 pick Jonathan Kuminga. Across the last few weeks, Kerr's media appearances have pieced together a sort-of guidebook for Lendeborg, utterly afraid to publicly challenge a rookie who has shown he's completely unafraid to publicly challenge anyone. Kerr has said Lendeborg needs to be more aggressive, and needs to run the floor harder, and needs to stand up on defense less, and throw himself into defenders mid-air less, and get considerably better as a weak-side defender, the latest of which caused its fair share of social-media reaction for its sheer bluntness.
"His weak-side awareness, right now, is very poor," Kerr said, after Golden State's loss to Phoenix Saturday night. "With his size, he should be one of our best defenders at the rim. And right now, he's unaware on the weak side, and that's an area he really has to improve."
The implication is that Kerr wouldn't address those faults so directly if he felt Lendeborg couldn't handle it. Two days later, Lendeborg was sitting in front of reporters criticizing himself for his own weak-side defense.
Lendeborg is now ultra-aggressive. He ran the floor hard against Denver, with four offensive rebounds. And was notably more engaged defensively. And played under considerable more control on drives in the second half, a directive that stemmed directly from Kerr's comments at halftime: he should take an extra dribble before he finishes.
"He's definitely going to give me all the right tools," Lendeborg said postgame, on Kerr. "And there's nothing for me to act like arrogant, in a negative way, towards it."
The 36-year-old Green has been peppering Lendeborg with any and every kind of advice for 48 minutes through his first few games. He told the rookie against Memphis, as Green recalled, to blow him off if he was overloading him with information. But Lendeborg feels, as he said postgame, that he "needs as much information as possible."
The rookie is 24, yes. He plays on innate feel. He played 11 games of high school basketball as a senior at Pennsauken High in New Jersey, and is in only his sixth and a half season of actual organized basketball at any level. He listened to 26-year-old guard Brandon Williams, on Monday, when Williams told him that his driving lanes were generating open perimeter looks. He listened to Green, who told him to be calm, control the game, and "win it for us," as Lendeborg recalled. Lendeborg was even trying to study Jokic mid-game, too, noting down his technique on one swipe-through foul he drew.
And in the fourth quarter, up 17, Lendeborg surveyed off a pick-and-roll and froze Nuggets guard Jamal Murray with a right-left-right jab-step that was only reminiscent of one move: Butler's rocker-step, which Lendeborg previously told the Chronicle he's been determined to learn.
"You tell him something and he come down the next play and it happens," Green said. "He applies it right away. So that's, I mean, that's special in itself."
This means trust. Curry and Green and the Warriors knew, from the start of training camp, that they would have to rely on a rookie forward. It's a strange situation for what had been one of the most dominant franchises in NBA history. And yet Curry deferred to Lendeborg for long stretches of Monday night's win.
Kerr and the Warriors are not only accepting Lendeborg's growing importance as an offensive closer, but embracing it.
"Basically, in all the critical moments of the game, we put the ball in his hands," Kerr said Monday. "And for a rookie to be that advanced already, it's extremely rare. But it's exciting, because I think he's going to get a lot better, too."
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There’s more to San Francisco with the Chronicle. Subscribe today for just 25¢.This article originally published at How a month of questions turned Warriors' Yaxel Lendeborg into force that dominated the Nuggets.