ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) — Yaxel Lendeborg has made more money than he ever dreamed was possible entering March Madness, allowing him to pay his mother's bills and buy her a new ride.
Lendeborg, though, could be even richer.
Michigan's 6-foot-9, 240-pound point forward was the top prospect in the transfer portal last year and Kentucky was prepared to make him the highest-paid player in college basketball.
“They started the number with $7 to 9 (million),”
Lendeborg said in an interview with The Associated Press. “They were pretty much going off on the route like we’ll pay him anything to get here.”
Instead, he chose to play for Dusty May and the Wolverines even though the former UAB star said he would have earned about three times more money if he suited up for Mark Pope and the Wildcats.
“I was raised without it and I went my my whole life without it,” Lendeborg said. “Anything was going to make me super, super happy at the time.
"I was thinking long term. What if I mess up my career because I chased the money instead of a future? Another big reason why I went with Dusty was he didn't talk about money at all. It was all about making me better and helping me achieve my goals.”
It has certainly worked out so far for him — and Michigan.
He was named the Big Ten Player of the Year as the top player for the one-seeded Wolverines, who will open the NCAA Tournament on Thursday and have a shot to end it with the school's second national championship and first since 1989.
The 23-year-old Lendeborg seems to be an example of what’s potentially positive about the transfer portal, which created a path for him to level up after stops at a mid-major program in Alabama and a junior college in Arizona.
While anyone who has paid attention to college basketball this season has seen him shine, they may not know his unlikely journey.
Or, the heartache that motivates him every day.
Lendeborg was born in Puerto Rico, moved to the Dominican Republic and then Ohio before spending the second half of his childhood in New Jersey.
Baseball was his favorite sport growing up, but he was more interested in video games than school until his mother's heart-to-heart talk changed the trajectory of his life.
Yissel Raposo told him that he was going to take 10 community college classes in one year to graduate from high school. He followed her instructions and rallied enough academically during his senior year to play organized basketball for the time over the final 11 games of the season.
His mother then successfully lobbied to land him a spot at Arizona Western. And after three years at the junior college, including a COVID-shortened season, he transferred to UAB and flourished.
Lendeborg joined Basketball Hall of Famer Larry Bird last year as the two Division I basketball players to have 600 points, 400 rebounds and 150 assists in a season.
Leading a talented squad with an influx of transfers, his statistics were not as spectacular this season. He averages a team-high 14.6 points and is second on the team with seven rebounds and three-plus assists per game.
“If he’s on the court, he’s giving you leverage,” May said.
After Lendeborg scored a total of 53 points in two wins over rival Michigan State, coach Tom Izzo said Lendeborg lived up to his billing.
“He handled it, he passed it, he shot it,” Izzo said.
Off the court, Lendeborg also has been influential and impactful on an unselfish team. In warmups, he often wears his teammates' jerseys to show them some love.
“The thing that’s been most impressive about Yaxel is how great of a teammate he is, and how much he’s embraced our culture and the way things are done here,” May said.
Even though Lendeborg can afford to fly his mother to every game, she has been able to attend just a handful because she was diagnosed with appendix cancer just before the season started.
“She's doing great,” he said. “She has three more sets of chemo left, and then she's going to be done with that treatment.”
Lendeborg will never forget, or take for granted, his mother's tough love that turned his life around.
“A lot of times when I think about it, I do get emotional," he said softly, sitting in a Crisler Center seat under Michigan's 1989 national championship banner. “I've always felt like I didn't belong, especially in the spotlight. It's been a dream."
It is, however, a reality his mother envisioned.
“Yaxel never believed in himself growing up,” she said Monday in a telephone interview. “I always talked to him in a positive way, telling him he was talented and he could make it in basketball.
"I feel so happy and proud that now he knows he is good, too.”
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AP March Madness bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-mens-bracket and coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness
