It’s not very often that college basketball players get compared to a basketball legend who is almost universally considered the best player of his generation. But after scoring 25 points, grabbing 12 rebounds, dishing three assists, making 75 percent of his shots and taking command of the game in an 86-61 win over Middle Tennessee, Yaxel Lendeborg earned that praise from a teammate.
“I’ve been saying it since I seen him, I feel like sometimes he looks like LeBron on the court,” L.J. Cason told the media
after the game. “It looks so easy for him, he’s starting to really figure it out, and it’s only going to get better, he’s only going to make us better.”
In the first half — much like he played to start this season — Lendeborg was a bit passive, deferring to teammates and picking his spots. He can be the facilitator that can lead the offense for the Wolverines, but when he’s going downhill or has his back to the basket, it’s easy to see why he was considered the top player in the portal by college basketball pundits and why many draft analysts consider him a first-round pick.
“I feel like nobody can really stop him, but he’s just so unselfish that he doesn’t even want to score,” Cason said. “He just falls into it, getting rebounds and doing the unselfish things, and the basketball gods just pay him back.”
Michigan’s coaching staff has been pushing Lendeborg to be more aggressive early on, and he wants to take charge of the offense more. And he didn’t mean that selfishly; he can be the dominant player his teammates and coaches know he’s capable of being.
“The past three games, I would say that I was sitting in as a role player,” Lendeborg said. “Just a little bit of reflecting, I didn’t come here to be a role player. I came here to be the man … I got a long way to go, but from now on, I’m going to try to be more assertive.”
Michigan got off to a rocky start on Wednesday night, only leading the Blue Raiders by six points at halftime while struggling to find a rhythm offensively. Lendeborg said his mindset was to be as aggressive as he could in the second half, to “punch them in the face first” and squash any attempt at an upset.
“I thought on the offensive end, he was awesome,” head coach Dusty May said. “I think just about every dead ball we ran something for (Lendeborg) and the intent was for him to create the advantage … and it seems off the top of my head, every time we ran something for him, something good happened.”
Lendeborg is not just a dominant scorer — he’s a great passer and makes all the hustle plays. And while it’s great he can set up his teammates for success, for Michigan to reach its ceiling, he needs to keep playing like he did in the second half against Middle Tennessee.
For Michigan to reach its full potential this year, Lendeborg can’t drift back into being a “role player,” as he put it. He needs to keep embracing the version of himself that took over the second half on Wednesday night. The version that made Cason think he was on the floor with LeBron James.
