Yaxel Lendeborg Begged Dusty May to Draft Him. Instead, He’s Headed to the Bay Area

recall

• A Joke Born Out of a Stunning Coaching Move
• The Backstory: How May and Lendeborg Got Here
• “Draft Me, Please”: The Pitch Heard Around the NBA
• Draft Night Arrives, and May Picks a Different Wolverine
• Lendeborg’s Reaction: Mock Outrage and Real Affection
• A Historic Night for Michigan Basketball
• Where Lendeborg Actually Landed
• Fin

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The 2026 NBA offseason produced one of its strangest, most entertaining sequences in recent memory, and it had nothing to do with a trade or a max contract. It started with a coaching change and ended with a star prospect publicly, half-jokingly campaigning to be drafted by his old coach — only to watch that same coach pick someone else.

The chain of events began on Monday, when news broke that the Dallas Mavericks were hiring Dusty May, fresh off a national championship at Michigan, as the franchise’s next head coach. The timing was almost impossible to script: the move landed roughly 24 hours before the 2026 NBA Draft, the exact event where three of May’s own Michigan players were about to hear their names called. One of them, forward Yaxel Lendeborg, wasted no time turning the situation into one of draft week’s best storylines, going on the air to all but beg his college coach to bring him to Dallas.

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— Yaxel Lendeborg (@Yaxel_Lendeborg) June 24, 2026

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May spent two seasons at Michigan after arriving from Florida Atlantic, where he’d already built a reputation as a program-builder by leading the Owls to the 2023 Final Four. At Michigan, he went 64-13 over two years, won back-to-back Big Ten titles, and capped his tenure with the program’s first national championship since 1989.

Lendeborg was central to that run. After a winding path to college basketball’s biggest stage — three seasons at the junior college level, where he became the NJCAA’s all-time leading rebounder, followed by two productive years at UAB — he transferred to Michigan for a single, decisive season. He started all 40 games, led the team in scoring at 15.1 points per game while adding 6.8 rebounds and 3.2 assists, and was named Big Ten Player of the Year. During Michigan’s six-game tournament run to the title, he elevated even further, averaging 18 points and nearly six rebounds a game on efficient shooting. May didn’t hide how much he valued him, at one point telling reporters that Lendeborg was a potential National Player of the Year candidate who never cared about his own shot total, only about what the team needed from him.

That dynamic, a star player who’d already won at the highest level under a coach he trusted completely, is exactly why the idea of running it back at the NBA level had real appeal for Lendeborg once May’s move to Dallas became official.

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Lendeborg didn’t waste any time making his feelings known. Appearing on SiriusXM NBA Radio the day after May’s hire was announced, he made it clear he wanted to keep playing for him.

“I would love to play for him for the rest of my life,” Lendeborg said, adding that May’s coaching was good enough that he hoped the decision would work out in his favor.

He went further when discussing his competition for May’s attention. With three Michigan players — Lendeborg, big man Aday Mara, and forward Morez Johnson Jr. — all considered likely first-round picks, and the Mavericks holding the No. 9 and No. 30 selections, the math was always going to be tight. Lendeborg argued he had the strongest bond with his former coach, joking that Mara might have an edge thanks to all the one-on-one games he and May reportedly played together, before adding a half-serious threat about how he’d feel if he got passed over.

By the time draft night arrived on Tuesday, the moment had been captured on camera and circulated widely: a laughing Lendeborg, point-blank, asking the Mavericks to use the No. 9 pick on him. He framed it as pure happiness for his coach’s new opportunity, with a catch attached — that happiness, he joked, would multiply considerably if Dallas made the obvious move and selected him.

 

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The Mavericks did, in fact, take a Michigan player with the No. 9 pick. It just wasn’t Lendeborg.

Dallas selected Morez Johnson Jr., the 20-year-old forward who’d played a key frontcourt role alongside Lendeborg and Mara during Michigan’s title run, reuniting him with May almost immediately. The selection came together with striking speed; reports framed the Mavericks as showing early confidence in the pick by moving on a Michigan player just hours after May’s hire was finalized.

Two picks later, at No. 11, the Golden State Warriors selected Lendeborg, sending him to the Bay Area instead of Dallas. One pick after that, at No. 12, Oklahoma City took Mara. In the span of four selections, all three of May’s Michigan stars were off the board, with May only able to bring one of them along to his new franchise.

For analysts, the Johnson selection over Lendeborg wasn’t entirely shocking once the broader context settled in. Much of the public conversation around Lendeborg throughout the pre-draft process centered on his age. He’s set to turn 24 shortly after the start of the season, making him notably older than the rest of the early lottery, while the Mavericks’ centerpiece, reigning NBA Rookie of the Year Cooper Flagg, won’t turn 20 until December. Building around a core that young, for some evaluators, made the younger Johnson the more logically aligned fit.

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True to the spirit of his pre-draft campaign, Lendeborg didn’t take the snub seriously, at least not publicly. Speaking to reporters after the pick, he kept the same joking tone he’d used all week, framing his reaction less as disappointment and more as good-natured ribbing aimed at his former coach.

“I’m definitely mad at Dusty because we know who his favorite is now,” Lendeborg said, before immediately pivoting to genuine support for his now-former teammate. He made clear the only outcome that would have actually bothered him was seeing a non-Michigan player taken over him, joking he might have had to cut off contact with May entirely in that scenario. Instead, he said he was fully happy to see Johnson land the opportunity, calling him deserving and predicting a strong NBA career ahead.

It was a fitting final beat to the storyline: a player who’d spent draft week treating the situation with humor continuing to do so even once the outcome didn’t go his way, while still making sure credit went to a teammate he’d just won a national championship alongside.

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Whatever happened with the specific seating arrangement in Dallas, Tuesday’s draft was an undeniable triumph for the Michigan basketball program as a whole. Johnson, Lendeborg, and Mara were all selected within the draft’s first 12 picks, marking just the third time in NBA history that an entire starting-caliber college frontcourt has gone off the board that quickly, and the sixth time in three decades that three non-freshmen from the same program were taken in the first round.

It capped an improbable run for a Michigan program that, under May, had gone from outside the national conversation to cutting down nets in back-to-back seasons of escalating success. The same night that delivered May’s college legacy validation also, almost immediately, forced Michigan to adjust to losing both its coach and its top three frontcourt pieces within roughly 48 hours, with assistant Mike Boynton Jr. stepping in as interim head coach to manage the fallout.

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If Lendeborg didn’t get the outcome he was publicly hoping for, he still landed in a situation that multiple analysts viewed as an excellent fit. The Warriors entered the draft with a clear need at the wing position, especially with Jimmy Butler III and Moses Moody both expected to miss significant time next season due to injury. At 6-foot-9 with a wingspan stretching beyond 7-foot-3, Lendeborg gives Golden State exactly the kind of two-way size it was missing, with some evaluators floating early comparisons to defensive menace OG Anunoby.

His age, the same factor that may have nudged Dallas toward a younger option, actually worked in his favor with a Warriors front office trying to maximize win-now production around a core that includes a 38-year-old Stephen Curry. Where some of Golden State’s recent lottery picks arrived as unfinished teenage prospects with years of development still ahead of them, Lendeborg comes in as a battle-tested, 23-year-old who’s already played well over 100 college games and started for a national championship roster. Golden State general manager Mike Dunleavy made clear after the pick that the team viewed him as the logical, value-driven selection at that slot, rather than a reach based purely on need.

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In the end, the most memorable subplot of the 2026 NBA Draft’s opening night wasn’t a trade or a surprise top-five selection. It was a star college player publicly lobbying his new-NBA-coach former mentor for a job, getting turned down in favor of a teammate, and responding with nothing but jokes and well wishes. Dusty May got to bring one of his championship-winning Wolverines to Dallas with him, just not the one who asked first and asked loudest. Lendeborg, for his part, heads to a Golden State team that may end up being a sharper fit for his game than Dallas ever would have been, even if it means a few more nights of good-natured texting wars with his old coach instead of shootarounds together.