CHICAGO – Dusty May had just called his star player immature in the nicest way possible, and Yaxel Lendeborg briefly leaned into the microphone inside the United Center to respond. Except the moderator didn’t notice, and the winning news conference moved on.
So, what did the oldest player left in the 2026 Men’s NCAA Tournament plan to say back to his coach?
“I was going to make a joke,” Lendeborg told USA TODAY Sports a few minutes later. “(May) told me at the beginning, ‘This isn’t going to be like a daddy day care.’”
The goofy 6-foot-8 late bloomer teammates have dubbed, “Dominican LeBron,” then let out another hearty laugh, basking in a Final Four berth Michigan wrapped up with plenty of time to celebrate by destroying No. 6 seed Tennessee, 95-62, in the Elite Eight on Sunday, March 29.
Lendeborg was the engine behind the blowout, igniting a 21-0 run with a ridiculous up-and-under 3-point play in the first half that left the Vols in the dust. He finished with 27 points to earn Midwest Region MVP honors, and cemented his status as perhaps the most irresistible character in Indianapolis next week.
The Pennsauken, New Jersey, product went viral all season for TikTok livestreams with his teammates in their hotel rooms, went viral again when video of him trash talking Purdue at a bar got out and went viral once more when he initially giggled at a question last month asking if Duke’s Cameron Boozer was as good as advertised.
Just this week, Lendeborg was filmed jamming to Katy Perry during warmups in Chicago and told reporters after the Sweet 16, when asked about a killer crossover to leave his defender on the floor, he was insulted that Alabama was using a freshman to guard him.
That went viral, too.
“We’ve challenged Yax to think about how he’s perceived,” May said. “You hate to be like that because he’s so authentic and he has such a big heart and you want that to shine.”
The story is a well-told one after the season Lendeborg has put together, and it will be told many more times in the lead-up to Michigan’s heavyweight bout against fellow No. 1 seed Arizona on Saturday night with a spot in the national championship game on the line.
Six years ago, Lendeborg had barely played high school basketball, growing up outside Philadelphia in Pennsauken, New Jersey, because of bad grades. He instead had an affinity for all-day, all-night sessions playing video games and almost flunked out until his mother had something of an intervention.
Then came three years of junior college, a two-year stop at UAB and finally he got to Michigan after eschewing the chance to be a first-round pick in last year’s NBA draft. He tried to keep his real emotions buried as the final minutes of Sunday’s game ticked away, to just be the class clown he was before the fame.
He waved his arms along with the videoboard at the United Center as the “Wacky Wavy Tube Man” promotion played during a timeout. He figured out how to be taller than every player on Michigan during the celebratory team photo and posed making a funny face. He took photos holding the Midwest Region trophy like a baby and cuddled with it on the floor. He didn’t cry until somebody suggested he take a photo holding the trophy with his mom.
“It kind of ruined everything I had going on,” Lendeborg said. “It feels like I’m in a movie right now.”
The ending has been emotional. Lendeborg recently wrote a story for The Players Tribune titled, “How my mom saved my life,” and its meaning runs even deeper than basketball during this March Madness run. Yissel Raposo has cancer and scheduled her chemotherapy treatments around her son’s potential NCAA Tournament run.
That he’s now fulfilling this dream only because of her is not lost on anyone, and Raposo held her cell phone aloft with one hand and wiped tears from her eyes with the other as Lendeborg climbed a ladder and snipped a portion of the net.
“I would work and she would be stuck with him and every day they were together,” Lendeborg’s father, Okary, told USA TODAY Sports through a translator. “That just became his role model.”
“I always believed in Yaxel. I always told him you have the potential, you have talent,” Raposo said.
Only when Lendeborg arrived on campus this past summer, May encountered a player who didn’t have great practice habits, who still wasn’t taking basketball seriously enough all the time.
But May also said he made a conscious decision to not judge Lendeborg, to coach him as the player he was in order to unleash the player he is today, storming down the court like a freight train years in the making.
“As humans we have personality flaws that we can get better at,” May explained.
It was a nice way of saying Lendeborg needed to grow up. So, rather than make a joke, Lendeborg just nodded and let the next question come.