Not many had high hopes for the Golden State Warriors this season, not with Jimmy Butler (and Moses Moody) set to miss so much time as they recover from their respective injuries.
And yet the team currently sits at 8-3, sixth overall in the West, and the deeper numbers - Golden State ranks No. 2 in offensive efficiency in 2026-27 and No. 11 in defensive efficiency - also support their hot start. On the other hand, the Warriors are currently hitting 43.6 percent from three that NBA.com labels wide open, thesecond-best mark in the league, so it's fair to wonder about the sustainability of that number. We think Stephen Curry will continue hitting his threes at a high clip, obviously, but will De'Anthony Melton, Will Richard, Al Horford and Brandin
Podziemski keep shooting between 42.9 and 40.3 percent from three? That remains to be seen.
There's another player on Golden State's roster currently scorching hot from three, and that's rookie phenom Yaxel Lendeborg. Lendeborg has been nothing short of a revelation for the Warriors, a breath of fresh air in a skilled 6-foot-9 package who can score from all three levels, rebound, create and defend, and who is looking like an absolute steal for Golden State, who got him with the 11th pick in the most recent draft. Absolutely no one expected Lendeborg to be as good as he is right away in the Association, as evidenced by the fact that his own college head coach at Michigan, Dusty May, didn't force the current team he's coaching, the Dallas Mavericks, to draft him with the team's ninth pick.
And yet, here we are, with Lendeborg playing like an All-Star in his first season and helping carry the Warriors to an impressive start. The former Michigan standout is averaging 21.4 points, 7.2 rebounds, 4.0 assists and 1.0 steals per game on 52.3 percent shooting from the floor and 44.3 percent shooting from three so far this season. He ranks Top 16 in our Global Rating metric and Top 30 in BPM league-wide.
The only other rookies to put up a 21/7/4 stat line in their inaugural campaigns? Four Hall of Famers (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Oscar Robertson, Larry Bird and Elgin Baylor), one future Hall of Famer (Luka Doncic) and a four-time All-Star (Sidney Wicks).
Solid company there for the San Juan native.
If Lendeborg were to make an All-Star appearance in this, his rookie season, he'd be the first first-year player to do so since Blake Griffin in 2011, who would have been in his second season that year had he not missed his whole rookie season due to injury, and the second since Yao Ming in 2003, who didn't really play at an All-Star level that season but was voted in due to massive fan support from his native China.
That's right, not even the likes of Doncic, LeBron James or Victor Wembanyama achieved All-Star honors as rookies. But with Lendeborg posting the numbers he's posting (he's one of just six players this season with a 21/7/4 stat line, joining Doncic, Alperen Sengun, Nikola Jokic, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Scottie Barnes on the list), and the Warriors playing like an elite team in large part thanks to their rookie out of Michigan, that makes us think Lendeborg might have a chance. Lest we forget, Warriors fans helped make Andrew Wiggins an All-Star starter in 2021-22, and his numbers that season were far less impressive than Golden State's current rookie forward.
An award that is even more attainable for Lendeborg, as things stand, is Rookie of the Year. Surprisingly enough, Lendeborg wouldn't be the oldest player in NBA history to win that award; that distinction would belong to David Robinson, who was a month older than Lendeborg when his own rookie season happened.
But an interesting twist that might happen is that we might see the first time the reigning Rookie of the Year is older than the reigning regular-season MVP (as pointed out earlier this week on Reddit). That would only happen if Lendeborg wins Rookie of the Year and Wembanyama wins MVP, which is possible, even if Doncic is the early favorite. If Lendeborg and Wembanyama pull it off, that would make the Rookie of the Year 461 days older than the NBA MVP, an almost unfathomable feat considering how young most elite first-year players tend to be.
As of now, the closest this has come to happening (we're obviously not counting Wilt Chamberlain or Wes Unseld, who won MVP as rookies) was when Bill Russell won MVP in 1958, and Woody Sauldsberry won Rookie of the Year, with 149 days separating them. The next closest instance came much more recently, in 2011, when Derrick Rose took home MVP honors while being 187 days older than that year's Rookie of the Year, Blake Griffin.
But a Lendeborg-Wembanyama Rookie of the Year-MVP ticket in 2026-27 would be the first time ever a ROY was older than the MVP, a product of the Warriors forward being a late-bloomer, one who spent three years. in JUCO and three years at the D-1 level. Just for reference, when Lendeborg's college career started in 2020-21, Wembanyama was still 16 years old.
Yaxel's torrid start to his NBA career has been nothing short of astounding. We'll see if he's able to keep it up as teams start to build more advanced scouting reports against him, but for now, we're looking at an extremely unique situation, especially considering the year we're in, when it's so much more difficult for future NBA stars to fall through the cracks.
We highly recommend you add HoopsHype as a preferred source on Google. You just have toclick here.
This content may be blocked in parts of Europe due toGDPR. To use it, connect yourVPN to a non-EU country and try again.
This article originally appeared on Hoops Hype: Yaxel Lendeborg could make strange history in the Rookie of the Year vote this season
