Warriors rookie Yaxel Lendeborg has called out Luka Doncic, declaring he “lost all respect” for the Lakers superstar after his incessant “whinging and complaining”.
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The Golden State forward had his ‘Welcome to the NBA’ moment in the 127-105 loss as Doncic nailed a buzzer-beating halfcourt shot in front of him and immediately turned in Lendeborg’s direction to share a few parting words.
It capped off a tense end to the quarter, which saw Doncic and Lendeborg regularly engage in trash talk as the rookie showed no signs of backing down.
That included one moment late in the first half where Doncic got Lendeborg to bite on a pump-fake and then clapped in the rookie’s direction and then later did similar when the Michigan product received his first career technical foul.
The Lakers superstar even appeared to say “come back out p***y” when Lendeborg checked out of the game.
Doncic had the last laugh, putting up 28 points in the Lakers win. But a fearless Lendeborg didn’t back down when asked about his back-and-forth with Doncic post-game.
In fact, he only went even harder at the Slovenian superstar.
“I had a lot of respect for him… I didn’t really watch the NBA much, I just watched highlights seeing him kill people all the time,” Lendeborg said.
“But then being in there first-hand just watching all the whining and complaining, I lost all respect man. That was awful.
“Me getting frustrated, it’s not about the foul being called. It’s about him complaining the entire game and then you get the foul called.
“Congratulations, bro. And then you talk to me like you did something great? C’mon, bro. That’s just weak.
“It kind of threw me off for a little while because, like I said, I had so much respect for him.”
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As for what Lendeborg was telling Doncic during their exchanges?
Well, the rookie was just as blunt.
“I was telling him he sucks,” he said.
“He can’t score on me. You’re talking, you can’t score on me. I said it the whole game. I said a couple of cuss words obviously, that’s why I got the technical and all that.
“But I was letting him know because he was laughing and talking all this because of that one foul call and his only bucket on me was a banker from halfcourt.
“It’s a team sport. He had 28 on us as a team.
“Me, I took my match-up personally. I tried not to get called on the fouls. I tried my best. I was thinking about playing him with my hands behind my back to see if that worked. I probably still would have got a foul called.”
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Doncic was far less willing to divulge any details on his running battle with Lendeborg when asked about it.
“I think everybody knows when somebody starts talking, you got a different me,” he said.
While Lendeborg doesn’t exactly have the runs on the board to be bad-mouthing a player of Doncic’s calibre, he had the backing of trash-talking teammate Draymond Green.
“Everybody is going to be like, ‘He shouldn’t talk to Luka. You should not talk to Luka’ and I disagree with that s*** 1000 per cent,” Green said.
“You f***ing go and talk to somebody you, you talk until you f***ing can’t talk no more and if he bust your a***e? Guess what? You play him three more times and you go back at his a***e another time and you see him a third time, you go back at his a***e again.
“Everybody in this league be like, ‘Certain guys you got to respect’. I ain’t come into this league with no respect. You earn respect. Everyone will say the rookie learned his lesson. What he learn? The next time he see him, go at his a**e again.”
The Lendeborg-Doncic clash may dominate headlines for days to come, but the real story to come out of Thursday’s game was Walker Kessler’s Lakers debut.
There were high expectations of Kessler after the Lakers traded two unprotected first-round picks and two first-round pick swaps for him in the offseason and then signed the former Utah Jazz big to a four-year, $130 million deal.
Kessler was supposed to be the missing piece in L.A.’s bid to build a title contender around Doncic, and he certainly looked the part on Thursday.
Kessler was a faultless 12-for-12 from the field as he put up 26 points to go with nine rebounds, becoming the first Lakers player with a perfect shooting night (minimum 12 shots) since Wilt Chamberlain in 1969.
“What he did today was unbelievable for us,” Doncic said.
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