Player Profile: Yaxel Lendeborg

In his two years at UAB, Yaxel Lendeborg showed the ball-handling and cognition of a guard, the perimeter defensive disruption of a wing, and the rebounding of a big. His only weakness was three-point shooting, which he quickly fixed at Michigan, shooting 37 percent on eight threes per 100 possessions. With such a well-rounded skill set, Lendeborg fills whatever role a lineup or system requires.

Lendeborg’s versatility powers his high floor. While I’ve always disagreed that age limits his upside, I initially thought athleticism would cap his ceiling. Stars either improve team shooting through creation or suppress opponent shooting through all-league defense. Yaxel's athletic limitations hurt both his creation and defensive impact.

Despite average midrange efficiency as a creator at UAB, Lendeborg leaned on floater, hook, and midrange jumpshot volume because he lacked burst off the dribble. Even when he got to the rim, he finished inefficiently relative to age. He gained minimal horizontal separation from his defender due to poor burst and struggled to get off the ground because of a mediocre vertical.

Lendeborg’s inefficient rim scoring, average midrange efficiency, and relatively high midrange volume drove a mediocre 54th percentile two-point percentage across his two UAB seasons. With little three-point volume to add, he didn’t show NBA-level creation.

At both UAB and Michigan, Lendeborg defended the perimeter as a three, protected the rim as a help-side four, and anchored the paint as a five. However, toggling between these roles doesn’t automatically make him elite at any one. He doesn't move well enough to consistently switch onto creators, cover ground quickly enough to specialize as a help rim protector, or reach high enough vertically to primary rim protect as a center. Lendeborg doesn't excel at any single defensive role, which limits his defensive shooting influence.

The athletic deficiencies that hinder Lendeborg’s defense show in his lineup numbers at UAB. His on-off swings in opponent rim efficiency and free-throw rate didn’t reach the significance levels of an All-NBA defender. His all-in-one defensive metrics were good but not elite. These show he didn’t consistently lock down the perimeter as a wing or anchor the paint as a big.

I graded Yaxel as a lottery pick to begin the season but didn’t view him as top-eight caliber because of his creation and defensive limitations. That held true until mid-season, when he started ripping self-created threes¹ out of pick-and-roll, isolation, and handoffs.

Lendeborg shot 38 percent on self-created threes and finished the season with 0.84 makes per 100 possessions. The latter number ranks first in modern college history among players with NBA power-forward size.

His combination of self-created three-point make volume (shotmaking proof-of-concept) and career free-throw touch (long-term shotmaking stability) is by far the greatest among power-forward sized draft prospects. With elite marks in both, Yaxel is the best pull-up shooting big in NBA draft history.

Age can’t penalize this skill either. No power forward in NBA history has consistently made pull-up threes at high volume. Blake Griffin and Julius Randle are the only ones with at least 50th percentile pull-up three-point make volume over a two-season stretch, and both capped out below the 65th percentile. Yaxel Lendeborg should easily surpass the 80th percentile at his peak, which would make him the first power forward to make pull-up threes at high volume.

Lendeborg's pull-up three also has latent effects. The threat of a pull-up keeps defenders on their toes, and drove his self-created two-point percentage from 37 at UAB (41st percentile) to 43 at Michigan (61st percentile). He can operate with volume above the break now, which is important because reads from above the break are also easier than reads from the post. Yaxel maintained 96th percentile passing frequency from UAB to Michigan while reducing his bad-pass frequency from 15.9 (87th percentile) to 13.2 (90th percentile).

In fact, Lendeborg’s blend of perimeter passing volume and efficiency at Michigan is unmatched among historical power-forward sized players, with the closest matches being Ben Simmons and Cameron Boozer. This is an improvement from his volume and efficiency at UAB, which were already in rarefied air.

With a historically great pull-up three, historically great passing, and above-average two-point scoring, Yaxel Lendeborg projects to be very difficult to guard out of pick-and-rolls and handoffs. He's the perfect role player and has a path to efficient NBA creation. He can play several positions on both ends, handle several roles on both ends, and fit into any lineup configuration. As a result, he earns a top-six placement on my board.