The Golden State Warriors have a lot of pressure on them with the 2026 NBA Draft coming up in less than a fortnight, with the hope of landing a solid young player who can ideally play right away
If the Warriors draft a player they’ve been linked to recently, they can rectify a mistake they made with Jonathan Kuminga. When the Warriors selected Kuminga with the No. 7 overall pick back in 2021, the hope was that he could be a dynamic athletic player who could give the franchise something different on the floor.
He just never really meshed into the team’s offense and it finally reached a breaking point this past season when he simply wasn’t being played by head coach Steve Kerr.
The irony of the whole situation is that Kerr never would have drafted Kuminga if it was up to him. Kuminga was the favorite of owner Joe Lacob, whereas Kerr preferred an alternative forward in Franz Wagner.
Since that fateful decision, Wagner has gone on to be a solid member of the Orlando Magic. It’s hard not to wonder how things might have turned out if Kerr got his guy rather than Lacob, but now the team has a chance to fix that error by drafting Yaxel Lendeborg.
Yaxel Lendeborg has a somewhat similar profile to Franz Wagner
Wagner and Lendeborg are both forwards who were basically projected as guys who could be “plug and plays.” They could be inserted into any system and make the team better with their versatility, which is exactly why Kerr wanted Wagner. He wanted a guy who could support the team’s existing brand of basketball based around Stephen Curry's abilities as a scorer, while Kuminga was a guy who the team would have to change its strategy in order to accommodate his skills.
Lendeborg has already spoken about how he feels he could make an immediate impact in Golden State’s offense: “Whenever Steph is getting taken out the game, I'll be there to assist, you know, maybe provide a little bit more offense or instant offense in a way.”
That would certainly be nice to have given the Warriors have been trying to figure out how to create offense without Curry on the floor for years.
They never figured out how to do it consistently with Kuminga, but maybe Lendeborg will just be a much easier fit and the Warriors can see what life might have been like had they taken Wagner five years ago.
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