Yaxel Lendeborg was spooked when Frank Vogel said he’d guard Luka Dončić

LAS VEGAS — Oct. 14, 2026 — Before Golden State’s 101-89 preseason win over the Los Angeles Lakers, Warriors assistant Frank Vogel floated a simple assignment to rookie Yaxel Lendeborg: you are guarding Luka Dončić tonight.

“I said, ‘What the f–k?’” Lendeborg recalled afterward, laughing about it once the night was over.

Vogel’s follow-up, as Lendeborg told it, was just as direct: nobody can stop him — do your best. Lendeborg tried to look unfazed. He was not.

“I tried to act, like, all cool, and not spooked,” he said. “But I was spooked, man. That’s crazy. My mind was all over the place after that.”

Luka sat. Kessler did not.

Dončić never checked in — the Lakers rested him — so the matchup never happened. Coach Steve Kerr still threw Lendeborg into the deep end. With Draymond Green also out, Lendeborg played three stretches of about six minutes and drew Walker Kessler, the 7-foot-2 Lakers big making his own preseason debut.

Lakers coach JJ Redick said before the game he was impressed by Lendeborg, then attacked him on that matchup. Lendeborg owned the film afterward.

“Just learning my coverages, man,” he said. “I messed up a bunch of coverages today. I was in the wrong spots a lot of times, and I just keep putting myself out of position. So, it’s definitely a lot of questions that I need to ask, and a lot more reps that are going to be coming up soon.”

He knows the Warriors will ask him to play the five in small-ball stretches when other bigs sit. “Especially with how the team looks with the bigs, it’s going to be a lot of games where they won’t be playing,” he said. “So I’ll have to step up and play that 5-man role. So I’m going to do a lot of self-reflecting and a lot of asking questions, watching film these next two days.”

Offense carried the night. Defense is the homework.

Lendeborg still led Golden State with 17 points (tied with Brandin Podziemski), adding five rebounds, four assists and two steals on 5-of-11 shooting in the comeback win. Last week he graded his own defense a five out of 10, saying he has not been as aggressive on the ball as he was in college and is still learning the lingo and coverages.

“I feel like I have a high basketball IQ, just, like, when it comes to those things, I can’t do what I did in college,” he said. “Because it’s not going to work here.”

Why it matters

Opening night is Oct. 21 at Crypto.com Arena against the same Lakers — and Dončić is expected to play after sitting this exhibition. Lendeborg’s honesty after Vegas is the point: he can score at a high clip in preseason and still admit a potential Luka assignment rattled him, then treat Kessler’s size as film work instead of spin. For a Warriors rookie asked to swing between wing and small-ball five, that combination — production plus candor — is the sample that matters before tip-off week.