At some point Saturday night, I said something on the livestream that sounded ridiculous even as it came out of my mouth: “This is the year of Yaxel Lendeborg saving the franchise.”
I was joking. Mostly. Lendeborg had just gone from 10-and-6 to 14-and-8 in what felt like the blink of an eye. By the end of the third quarter against the Sacramento Kings, he was sitting at 23 points, 10 rebounds and six assists on 10-for-14 shooting. The Warriors eventually won 111-106.
One quick note before getting into the game itself: our free Discord “Knowledge Base” has become the running notebook for nights like this. That’s where we collect the pregame news and comments, warmup footage, in-game observations and clips, postgame coverage and all the little details that can disappear once everything starts moving quickly.
Rather than trying to recreate that entire archive here, I’m going to leave the real-time material where it belongs and use Substack to do something different: take everything we saw and heard and figure out what actually mattered.
And yet the box score probably undersells what made this performance so interesting. It wasn’t just that Yaxel scored. It was the way the Warriors increasingly treated him like someone who should have the ball.
There was one possession late in the second quarter where Yaxel brought the ball up, swung it to ome Wardell Stephen Curry II, and Draymond Green started moving into position for the kind of Steph-Draymond action we’ve seen approximately eight billion times over the last decade, except Steph saw Yaxel’s matchup and he gave the ball right back.
Yax attacked one-on-one and scored and that might have been my favorite play of the night, not because it was some spectacular highlight, but because of what it suggested: Steph trusted the matchup.
A few possessions later, Draymond saw the same thing. Yaxel had Precious Achiuwa in front of him. Draymond essentially told him: “Go!” So Yaxel went, attacked, got to his push shot, scored and flexed. That’s a real 6’8” NBA rotation player he was going through. And it turns out this was pretty much exactly what Steve Kerr had asked him to do before the game.
“He’s a player who’s very instinctive, but his mindset is usually to pass first, which we love about him,” Kerr said pregame. “But given the nature of our team, the makeup of our team, we’re going to need him to score.”
Steve specifically wanted Yax attacking in transition, getting downhill and putting pressure on the defense. Against Sacramento, that message appeared to have been received.
What continues to surprise me is how many different things Lendeborg can already do offensively. He hit the right-corner three early off a Green kick-out, rebounded and pushed the ball himself, went coast-to-coast, used hesi’s and footwork inside, crossed over Achiuwa, slowed down, absorbed contact and finished an and-one, and created for other people.
At the end of the third quarter, he pushed the ball up the floor, got to the nail and sprayed it out to Brandon Williams for a buzzer-beating three. Six assists, one turnover through three quarters from a rookie forward.
And there was another five-out possession I loved: Draymond at the pinch post, with both Brandin Podziemski and Lendeborg cutting in succession before Yaxel finished at the rim. We keep talking about what this new five-out offense could eventually become. Yaxel looks increasingly important to that conversation because he isn’t limited to one job: screening, cutting, attacking a closeout, bringing the ball up, making the next pass. And apparently, now, Curry is willing to look at a matchup and say, basically, “Nah, Yax has this one.”
Kerr’s postgame comments made that part even more interesting: “He’s huge and can handle the ball and get to the rim. We’re going to play through him a lot this year.”
Then Steve was asked directly whether Yax essentially has the green light to grab a rebound and go coast-to-coast: “For sure.”
The Warriors want to increase both their transition frequency and efficiency after struggling in that area last season, and Kerr said Yaxel can “put a ton of pressure on the rim and create shots for himself or for others.”
The instruction is essentially to keep attacking until somebody stops the ball, then make the next pass. That explains a lot of what we were watching Saturday.
But…
Now for the part we’re studying Sunday. The offense is the easy part right now, but the defense is not. That’s exactly why I’m doing a full Yaxel defensive Xs & Os livestream Sunday night at 8:00PM Pacific.
We got more film Saturday against the Kings. Some of it was encouraging, some of it definitely was not. Keegan Murray got Lendeborg with a jab early and made him bite. Ben Simmons beat him off the first step. Murray got him again later, going left-to-right.
There were also possessions where Yax was late helping on a roll or didn’t provide the kind of transition help I wanted to see. This is where I want to be careful. I’m not looking at those clips and concluding that Yaxel can’t defend. He’s a rookie being asked to process NBA spacing and speed, switches, help responsibilities and some very good individual offensive players. That’s a lot.
But if we’re going to get excited about everything he’s showing offensively (and we should) then we owe it to him to be just as specific about where he has to improve defensively, because the Warriors as a whole have a problem there. The point-of-attack defense was bad, again.
Sacramento got downhill far too easily. It wasn’t just Yaxel, it was Podziemski, even Gary Payton II on a couple possessions, Gui Santos, too, and the guards getting brushed by screens and the next layer of the defense having to react.
Lendeborg already having 20 points and eight rebounds at halftime and yet Golden State only up five, that told you a lot, so tomorrow we’re going to look at the actual film rather than just saying “good defense” or “bad defense.”
Where is Yax’s stance, what is he reacting to, when does he bite, when is he supposed to provide help, and when is something that looks like his mistake actually the result of a breakdown somewhere else?
By the way, Williams looks like, as long as he stays healthy (knock on wood), he’s in an awfully strong position to make this team with that guarantee date of Opening Night. Kerr’s own pregame answer only strengthened that impression.
With Steph expected to practice less and probably miss some games this season, Steve specifically volunteered B-Will’s name: “We’re excited about Brandon Williams, who’s a new player for us. He’s got a chance to play a lot of those minutes when Steph’s not there.”
Then again, Williams had five turnovers Saturday. And that leads us directly to the part of the night that made me want to bang my head against the desk: the bakery remains open.
At one point in the first quarter, the Warriors had four turnovers in roughly the first five minutes and were on pace, mathematically, for nearly forty.
That obviously didn’t happen and they settled down for a while, but then they started doing it again. The final number, according to Kerr after the game: 23 turnovers.
“At least half of them, just unforced errors,” said Coach. “Our whole purpose in training camp is to win the game in the margins. You’re going to hear me say that a lot. And the ball is everything.”
Santos finished with five turnovers, B-Will (“B-Dub?”) had five, Steph threw one away early and Draymond had a couple mental mistakes out of the gate, including a cross-court pass that edned up with Podz having to lurch and stepping out of bounds (turnover, BP — technically not on Dray although he deserved it).
Not to mention, Horford looked rusty and gave some possessions away before getting into a better rhythm later. Right now the turnovers are still a disease infecting the Dubs’ bloodstream.
Kerr and Mike Dunleavy, Jr. talked about internal improvement at the exit interviews. Saturday night, I found myself saying something else.
The internal improvement has actually been external because Yax wasn’t here last year and neither was B-Dub. Those are the guys giving you some of the clearest signs of improvement, but meanwhile, the “tee-bee-tot” problem looks awfully familiar (aka TTBTTOT or “throwing the ball to the other team”).
Kerr wasn’t sugarcoating that part afterward, either: “You just can’t make mindless plays in this sport and expect to win at this level.”
However, Steve came through with something else that made me very happy. He plans to clip eight to ten of the turnovers and show them to the team at Monday’s practice.
YES! We have a turnover to-do list.
Hopefully the bakery closes by Opening Night.
For paid subscribers, I’ve added a postgame notebook below with some of the most useful additional context from Kerr’s pregame and postgame media sessions — including what his answers suggest about Williams, LJ Cryer and Graham Ike, how the Warriors are thinking about Curry’s workload, and why Kerr’s comments about Lendeborg make Saturday’s performance even more significant.
I’ve also pulled out the most relevant portions of the podium transcripts so we can go a little deeper into what the Warriors themselves were saying before and after the game.
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