‘It’s a time and a place’: Chronicles of Yaxel Lendeborg’s lifelong goofiness and learning to rein it in

Slumped on the floor, leaning up against the scorer’s table clearly in pain, Yaxel Lendeborg insisted he was ready to go back into the Big Ten Championship Game.

In fact, he was only on the sidelines because he’d exhausted all of his pleas to remain on the court in the first place. He let out an audible yell of frustration, frantically signalled to the sidelines that he was okay to stay in, and even turned his back on the bench in defiance. But with the play blown dead for his turned ankle, he had no choice but to relent to the substitution.

That’s the killer mentality of someone mentally engulfed in the game. The only thing that mattered was staying on the court. Not his turned ankle. Not Call of Duty. Just basketball.

Fun-loving, goofy Yaxel Lendeborg was left in the locker room. The Lendeborg on the court wasn’t joking around. 

***

Lendeborg’s journey from academically ineligible to Big Ten Player of the Year has made its rounds, largely thanks to his own telling of the story in The Players’ Tribune. He spent most of his time playing video games, and when he was at school, he was busy trying to be the class clown.

His poor grades kept him off the basketball court, and despite daily pleas from friends and family, nothing convinced Lendeborg to make a change. That is, until a heart-to-heart with his mother ‘changed his life,’ and the rest is history.

Yaxel Lendeborg’s close childhood friend, Jose Mendez — whose house Lendeborg was at engaging in a seven-plus hour Madden marathon mere moments before his heart-to-heart with his mom — used two words to describe Lendeborg: tall and goofy. 

“It’s just like him being tall and then goofy is a good combo,” Mendez told Go Blue Detroit. “It’s a one-two punch, you know?”

Lendeborg is a ‘goofball,’ that much has always been true. It’s a large part of what makes him unique, and to some degree, a large part of why he’s successful. Lendeborg is unapologetically himself, and his mere presence invites others around him to loosen up a bit too. 

The ‘tall’ part of the one-two punch is also apt. Standing at 6-foot-9, Lendeborg is, well, tall. And something about a tall kid with an unpredictable sense of humor just made sense to Mendez.

“It would just be him just being him, and that’s what makes him goofy,” Mendez said. “You know when somebody is just automatically funny because of the stuff they do? He was just a nut case.”

Taking things seriously just wasn’t in his nature when he was young. From trampoline days and water fights to almost burning the house down trying to make fried Oreos, Lendeborg and his friends were almost always engaging in hijinks.

The only problem was that, for a long time, his joking and unserious demeanor got in the way of important things — like his homework, for example.

But, peeking through his untamed goofiness and lack of motivation, there was always natural interest in — and talent for — the game of basketball. He was tall as well as goofy, after all, and there were signs that he might be able to do something with the sport.

One day in high school, Lendeborg was hanging out at Mendez’ house, which had a portable basketball hoop weighed down by bricks in the driveway. Mendez mentioned that his family was preparing to get rid of it, and Lendeborg was having none of that.

“When his mom came, he wanted to take the court, but it was like, ‘Yo, how are you going to take the court and the bricks?’ ” Mendez recalled. “This man grabbed the court, his mom grabbed the bricks and walked from 42nd street to 49th Street, seven blocks away. He walked both of them things to his crib, right there.”

Mendez and Lendeborg disagree on one fundamental truth about that particular court, however:

“(Lendeborg) never beat me in ball, to this day, not once.” Mendez said with a mischievous note in his voice. “I taught him everything. Everything he’s doing in college, that was my moves.”

That’s quite the statement considering Lendeborg just earned the Big Ten Player of the Year award. But Mendez, whose primary sport was football, stands strong on his claim as all good friends do. Lendeborg wholeheartedly denies Mendez’ assertion.

“That kid is such a liar, man,” Lendeborg said, laughing and shaking his head following a win over Ohio State in the Big Ten Tournament. “He can’t be talking like that. He never beat me. Ever.”

While it’s unlikely that either party will ever back down from their claims of evergreen dominance, it’s clear that Lendeborg always enjoyed hooping. It’s just that ‘fun’ was all it really was for him at the time — nothing more, nothing less. It wasn’t something that commanded his attention enough to give up day-long Madden marathons with his buddies.

Lendeborg had obvious talent in basketball, but his unseriousness had no kill-switch, and basketball took a backseat because of it.

“We would try to tell him, ‘Yo, can you at least do some school work so you can get (on the court)? They just want to see some type of effort,’ ” Mendez said. “But it ain’t click in his head. What clicked in his head was Fortnite.”

***

When it finally clicked for Lendeborg in his senior year of high school — largely thanks to his mother, Yissel Raposo — he was able to rejoin a competitive basketball team and was immediately one of the best players on the court. He was, at the end of the day, still a 6-foot-9 athletic monster.

But even after a wildly successful five years of college — three years at junior college Arizona Western and two seasons at UAB — he still felt like he needed one more.

His decision to play one more year of college wasn’t simply a financial decision, nor due to a lack of skill — he would’ve been drafted in the first or early-second round, no doubt — rather, he believed he still needed to grow as a person as well as a player.

“Coming out of UAB, I still felt like I had a lot of habits to break, and just the way I approached life still was kind of childish,” Lendeborg said in an interview with CBS. “I just believe in (Michigan coach Dusty May’s) ability to just mold me into an actual pro before I get there.”

When he got to Michigan, he quickly formed a tight bond with returning senior guard Roddy Gayle Jr., and the two became attached at the hip. They’re roommates on the road, always sitting next to each other in the locker room during media scrums, and Lendeborg has warmed up for several games sporting Gayle’s jersey.

Given his closeness with Lendeborg, Gayle jokes that he’s often on what he calls ‘Yax duty.’

“With my relationship with Yax, just being able to be comfortable being myself, him being himself, but also sometimes we got to be serious,” Gayle told Go Blue Detroit. “I’m usually on ‘Yax duty.’ I make sure he brings his best.

“He’s grown tremendously,” Gayle added. “Over the summer, he was terrible. He didn’t know when to take stuff seriously, when to lock in. But just the growth that he’s shown — he’s become more serious in different aspects.”

Even though he was the consensus No. 1 player in the 2025 Transfer Portal, he still needed the occasional reminder that it’s not always time to joke around. But that’s why he came back to college, and Michigan had the infrastructure to help him grow.

It’s not that he needs to rework his entire personality in order to be successful — that’s far from the case. Lendeborg’s light-hearted personality is actually a refreshing take on the overly-stoic star player, and Michigan’s locker room cohesiveness is partly because of that. 

His teammates love his energy, jokes and all. The Wolverines play with overt joy on the court, and it’d be hard to overlook Lendeborg’s role in that culture. In a way, an occasional lapse in focus during practice seems a small price to pay.

“You don’t meet too many genuine people that play at such a high level,” graduate guard Nimari Burnett said of Lendeborg’s locker room presence. “He’s a joy to be around. … If it is a little bit of down energy, we have each other’s back with our goofiness and our funniness. And I think that's a huge part of our team, and honestly, while we’re so successful on the court.”

***

Lendeborg understands that everything is still a work in progress. While those who are close to him have nothing but glowing reviews, there have still been instances where he has struggled to maintain constant professionalism. He’s learning from lived experience that everything he does from now on is scrutinized.

Before the Wolverines took on Purdue at Mackey Arena Feb. 17, a video of Lendeborg surfaced in which he passionately and explicitly described how badly he expected Michigan to beat Purdue. He didn’t mince any words, exclaiming that they would “beat they f— a—,” and rounding out the 10-second clip with an emphatic, “F— Purdue.”

The video was taken at a bar before the season began, but it gained plenty of social media traction prior to the matchup. The Boilermaker-faithful — rightfully — found the clip disrespectful. 

This is just the start of Lendeborg’s time in the spotlight. Basketball is a business as much as it is a game, and there is still a level of decorum that is expected from its constituents. With everything he says and does being monitored and dissected, it’s not hard for something that he deems to be a light-hearted joke to be interpreted in a different manner.

“There’s definitely times to be funny and times not to be funny,” Lendeborg said. “Me, I still got to figure out the best balance for that.”

But on the court, Lendeborg has it all figured out.

“You get a different feeling in the game, I guess adrenaline takes over, you don’t feel as goofy as you did before,” Lendeborg said.

He’ll still throw a teammate a smile or crack a joke on the bench, but in the heat of a game, he’s not worried about getting a laugh. In the big moments, like the Big Ten Championship Game, he has tunnel vision.

No, he’s not perfect. And Lendeborg, of all people, knows that. But even Mendez, who keeps in consistent contact with Lendeborg, has noticed the growth and maturity in his friend.

“He definitely matured,” Mendez said. “It isn’t the same goofy Yax. Sometimes we’ll get it, but it’s a time and a place, and now he finally knows that.”

Indeed, there is a time and a place. It’s all one big balancing act, such is life, and he’s still working to find the sweet spot.

Don’t worry, though, because forever tall, Yaxel Lendeborg will always have a little goofy in him.