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Yaxel Lendeborg and the Golden State Warriors struggled to find their bearings in their first game since Stephen Curry got injured, getting blown out by 38 points in a humiliating 85-123 loss to Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs.
Lendeborg, who made overconfident remarks about having a strategy to face Victor Wembanyama, admitted after the game that the French star’s dominant presence in the paint threw him off tonight.
He finished with three points, seven rebounds, and one assist while shooting 1-13 from the field (7.7% FG) and missing both his three-point attempts. Part of his strategy was to shoot more three-pointers, which clearly didn’t happen.
Following the game, Yaxel Lendeborg spoke to the media scrum in the locker room and addressed his and the team’s struggles in tonight’s performance.
“I don’t have nothing to learn, bro; we got the s–t beat outta us. I don’t know what to learn, man. I was flustered the entire game, man. Couldn’t make a damn layup,” Yaxel Lendeborg said in his takeaways from the game.
“Man, honestly, it all just felt the same. They made more shots than us; they got Wemby. It almost looked like we were playing volleyball. Nobody wanted to go into the paint; they didn’t want to get their shot blocked by him, so we were all just doing a bunch of weak a– floaters,” he further added about what the Spurs did defensively with Victor Wembanyama that threw off not just his but the whole Warriors’ offense.
“It wasn’t even our game; I don’t know how many of us work on those. Especially me, I shot like seven of those, and I don’t even work on floaters,” he further added.
“I just wasn’t being aggressive; he’s skinnier than me,” Lendeborg further added on Victor Wembanyama.
“I just got to go up there and put an elbow in his chest and jump into his body or something. If he blocks it, he blocks it. I can’t go up there scared; that’s pretty much what it was- all of us were scared in a way. But we’ll get him next time, I guess.”
Victor Wembanyama finished the game with 12 points, 12 rebounds, six assists, two blocks, and one steal to stuff the box score. He shot 5-11 from the field (45.5% FG) in just 21 minutes of action tonight.
A reporter then asked Lendeborg what the Warriors hope to do to move past this blowout loss on the road.
“I’m not gonna move past this; I don’t know about others. Everybody says throw the game out the damn window. I can’t throw a damn thing out the window. We just lost by like 100. So, you know, I’m f–ked up mentally right now. We got a game in two days … We’ll see how we can bounce back.”
Lendeborg then dove into the mentality that he had coming into the game and the moment he knew that tonight was going to be an off night for him offensively.
“First shot went in and out, and I was like, ‘Yup, this is going to be a bad day.’ Next shot, I airballed a floater or something like that, and once you airball a floater, you know it’s over for the rest of the game. So I was just pissed off, tried like three more floaters, made one, missed two.”
“I don’t know what was going on with me, man. I couldn’t make a shot. I was 1-13, it was an awful performance by me. I let everybody on this team down. They keep saying there’s like 70 more games left; I’m like, man, I’m not going to forget this.”
“I can’t remember the last time I was beat and went the whole entire game with no hope at all. It felt helpless out there… I’m cooked right now,” Lendeborg concluded.
Lendeborg’s brutal honesty reflects just how difficult the Warriors’ night was, particularly with Curry sidelined. While the rookie will undoubtedly want to put this performance behind him, his comments also suggest he intends to use the defeat as motivation.
The Warriors will need a much stronger response in their next outing. They will now head to New Orleans to face the Pelicans on Monday night, November 16.
It remains to be seen whether Yaxel Lendeborg and the Warriors can bounce back from this humiliating loss on the road and avoid a losing streak after such a promising start to the regular season.
https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/yaxel-lendeborg-confesses-victor-wembanyama-070519831.html
