SAN FRANCISCO — It took less than a minute Friday night for the chants to start.
Lu-ka sucks! Lu-ka sucks! Lu-ka sucks!
Anytime Luka Doncic touched the ball, boos rained down from the rafters inside Chase Center, a response to the villain created on Opening Night with his spat with Warriors rookie Yaxel Lendeborg.
Some 48 minutes later, however, it was Doncic’s newly minted archrival who felt like the boos should have been directed his way after, as he put it, “the worst game of my life.”
Hyperbole or not, the highly anticipated rematch with Doncic and the Lakers was without a doubt the worst game of Lendeborg’s young NBA career — six games into it.
A few days earlier, Lendeborg said he was “absolutely” looking forward to seeing Doncic again, after culminating their back-and-forth Oct. 21 by saying he “lost all respect” for him.
When it came time to back up those words, he got absolutely pulverized.
“He’s a really confident guy,” coach Steve Kerr said of Lendeborg. “Tonight just didn’t go his way. Everybody has nights like this. The key is to bounce back with aggression and confidence.”
While Doncic went off for a game-high 37, including more than a few when matched up against Lendeborg, the Warriors rookie was contained to single digits for the first time in his career.
In a 112-95 win, the Warriors were outscored by 20 in Lendeborg’s 24 minutes. He attempted only three shots, got to the foul line once and finished with six points. He didn’t dish out a single assist, turned the ball over five times and eventually fouled out with 2:45 left.
“We’re asking a lot of him,” said Steph Curry, who picked up the slack with 31 points on eight 3-pointers. “He has a lot of responsibility. He’s playing a ton of minutes. He’s got the ball in his hands a lot. So there are going to be highs and lows to it. … It’s a tough demand, but I think he’s built for it, and I’m pretty sure he’ll respond extremely well the next game.”
Going into it, Lendeborg said his goal was to remain poised and keep his cool.
Mission accomplished, maybe a little too much. Lendeborg let the crowd do the talking, but he was passive and out of sorts when it came to the actual game on the court.
“There were a lot of moments where I could have crashed out,” Lendeborg said. “But I stayed calm — a little too calm I feel like in order to get myself into a groove.
“I was just in my head the whole time.”
Every game is a lesson for a rookie still getting his feet wet in the NBA.
Lendeborg’s biggest takeaway from his worst night as a pro?
“Jesus,” Lendeborg said. “Man, honestly, I don’t even know. Try not to wet the bed as bad as I did. Or when you’re having moments like that, try to lean on your teammates a little more.”
While Lendeborg described himself as “pretty much the only Debbie Downer on the team,” Curry had a different perspective.
“What I love is he’s really established an even-keel kind of presence and mentality that it helps on nights like tonight [that] don’t go his way because he doesn’t kill the energy on the team,” Curry said. “We have his back through all of that.”
Kerr’s best advice for the rookie was to flush this game as quickly as possible. They have another one Sunday against the Clippers, another Monday against the Suns and 74 more after that. The unrelenting pace of the NBA schedule is one of the biggest adjustments for a rookie.
“You can’t dwell on tough games,” Kerr said. “Young players tend to dwell on things a little bit. And then all of a sudden there’s another game and another game after that. You can’t let anything build up. You have to move forward.”
Informed of the words of wisdom Kerr had passed on at the podium a short while earlier, Lendeborg couldn’t help but flash that charismatic grin and let out a chuckle.
He had just admitted that he was “a big dweller on bad games.”
“I don’t know how long that’s gonna take to get out of that habit,” Lendeborg said. “But I’ll see what I can do.”
