Yaxel Lendeborg managed to grab all the attention in his NBA debut, though not for his basketball. The Warriors’ rookie was at the center of one of the early-season clashes, and he could not have picked a worse opponent for it. Because angering Luka Doncic is never a good idea, something the Slovenian reminded him of instantly.
The mood heated up throughout the first half, with continuous trash talk between the two even when one of them was on the bench. And at a certain point, the referees had no choice but to award Lendeborg a technical foul, who kept talking to Luka as the Warriors began one of their final attacks of the first half. The call was met with frustration by the forward and what followed helped ignite the Slovenian’s plan for revenge.
This arrived a few seconds later, when Doncic ended the first half with a buzzer-beating three from the center of the court, an action after which he turned to point at Yaxel and exchanged a few words with him. The tension between them was evident and, once the game was over, both could give their account of what happened.
Luka Doncic has been talking trash to Yaxel Lendeborg all night.
The rookie already has a tech.
Luka just drained a half court and pointed right at him, talking even more trash to his face.
Welcome to the NBA. https://t.co/FcvnwlXxUh
— Legion Hoops (@LegionHoops) October 22, 2026
“He was talking like a madman, and I didn’t want to respond because this season I don’t want to get fined. In fact, this is the first time the referees have called a technical on the rival and not a double technical, because this time I kept quiet,” he commented, and he later admitted that he looked for the half-court shot to keep frustrating his rival: “I knew it would go in before I even had the ball in my hands. It’s a shot I work on quite a bit.”
Tired of the Complaints
Lendeborg, for his part, stressed Doncic’s ongoing protests to the referees, which, according to him, were what took him out of the game. In fact, he went so far as to say that the Slovenian’s way of complaining had made him lose all respect for him, and spoke of Luka with a certain disdain for having been unable to score on his defense.
“He was flopping all the time, looking for fouls, protesting the referees… I had a lot of respect for him, but after experiencing all his complaints firsthand I’ve lost all respect for him,” the rookie asserted. “It’s been horrible. My frustration doesn’t come from the fouls whistled, but from watching him complain all game. And if, on top of that, you manage to draw a foul and then you come over to talk to me as if you’ve done something amazing, to me what you demonstrate is weakness.”
“I was telling him that he’s a scrub, that he can’t score on me. That’s what I’ve been telling him all game. I wanted him to know it, because he was talking and laughing the whole time about the fouls but the only basket he’s hit is from midcourt. Okay, this is a team sport and he scored 28 points, but I take the matchup personally. I even considered guarding him with my hands behind my back, but I think they would have blown fouls on me anyway.”
