Lord Lendeborg: Claim Him, Blazer Nation. He Earned It.

Yaxel Lendeborg heard his name called Tuesday night in Brooklyn, hugged his mother and walked to the stage as the 11th pick in the 2026 NBA Draft.

Every graphic said Michigan. Every highlight package showed maize and blue. When NBA Commissioner Adam Silver announced the pick, it was "from the University of Michigan" — because that is how the NBA Draft works. You belong to your last school.

And in Birmingham, the feelings were complicated.

The Golden State Warriors just drafted the highest pick in UAB basketball history. Higher than Oliver Robinson in 1982. Higher than anyone who has ever worn green and gold. A 6-foot-9 forward with a 7-foot-3 wingspan, a national championship ring on his finger and a four-year rookie contract worth nearly $29 million waiting for him in San Francisco.

He is a UAB graduate. He played 72 games in a Blazers jersey. He won back-to-back AAC Defensive Player of the Year awards, led the nation in double-doubles, set the program's single-season rebounding record and became only the second Division I player in history — after Larry Bird — to record 600 points, 400 rebounds and 150 assists in a single season.

This is the part where some fans tune out. The portal took him. Michigan bought him. He left. Dead to me.

I understand the instinct. I do. And I think it's wrong.

The story of Yaxel Lendeborg and UAB is one of the best development stories in college basketball. It deserves to be told from the beginning and claimed by every program that helped write it.

He barely played high school basketball. Eleven games his senior year at Pennsauken High in New Jersey after his mother — Yissel Raposo, a former Dominican Republic national team player — forced him to enroll at Camden County College and take seven to 11 courses in a single semester to become eligible. His athletic director had refused to sign the waiver. His friends had to talk him into trying out. Basketball, by his own account, was something he did for fun between baseball and video games.

After the season ended, he thought basketball was over. "I woke up at 8:30, my mom's forcing me to go to New York to go play in a camp for like just a Dominican camp," he told CBS-42 in Birmingham during his senior season at UAB. "I don't know what's going on. I'm nervous, scared."

A junior college coach saw him at that camp. His mother took the call. Next thing he knew, he was on a plane to Yuma, Arizona.

Three years at Arizona Western Community College. From 6.1 points per game as a freshman to 17.2 and a national-leading 13.0 rebounds as a junior. Two-time NJCAA All-American. The program's all-time leading rebounder. Nobody in Division I had heard of him.

UAB had.

Andy Kennedy's staff recruited him in April 2023. Former UAB staffer Noah Dartmann — now at ULM — still has the recruiting presentation they built for that visit. Kennedy wanted to show Lendeborg a player comparison: Paolo Banchero. Three years later, the NBA's official draft prospect profile listed the same comp. UAB called it first.

His first game in a Blazers jersey was a disaster, and he knew it.

"I didn't make a field goal. I missed about eight free throws and I feel like we lost that game entirely because of me," he told CBS-42. "So I'm never going to forget that game."

Ryan Cross, UAB's associate head coach now the head coach at Louisiana-Monroe, told him what every good coach tells a JUCO transfer adjusting to the highest level of college basketball: "It's one game. You'll get it. JUCO players always take time to develop."

Lendeborg's response, looking back: "I'm just thinking, man, you're just saying that to make me feel good. But I feel like it ended up being true."

It ended up being spectacularly true. By the end of his first season, he was the American Conference Defensive Player of the Year, the American Tournament MVP and a first-team All-AAC selection. Averaging 13.8 points and 10.6 rebounds. Blocking 2.1 shots per game.

His second year was better. Seventeen points and 11 rebounds per game. Twenty-six double-doubles, the most in the country. A single-season school record of 420 rebounds. The Larry Bird milestone. UAB fans were showing up to Bartow Arena to watch a player they knew the rest of the country was about to discover.

He celebrated with them. Arms spread wide after a 97-88 win over No. 19 Memphis. Dancing on the court after big plays because he knew the crowd would laugh with him. "I'm very happy that the fan base embraced me like that," he said.

They called him Lord Lendeborg. The Dragon's Den podcast made a graphic of him riding a green dragon. He loved it.

Here is where the story gets complicated, and here is where I want Blazer fans to slow down and look at the timeline honestly.

Yaxel Lendeborg graduated from UAB. He earned his degree. He fulfilled everything he came to Birmingham to do.

After his first season — AAC Defensive Player of the Year, tournament MVP, a legitimate NBA prospect — he had seven-figure NIL offers to leave. He turned them down. He came back to UAB for what he believed was his final year of college eligibility.

Read that again. He had the money on the table after Year 1. He stayed.

Then a lawsuit happened. Diego Pavia, a Vanderbilt quarterback, sued the NCAA over a rule that counted junior college seasons against Division I eligibility. A federal judge sided with Pavia. The NCAA's Division I Board of Directors, facing the injunction, approved a blanket waiver granting an extra year of eligibility for 2025-26 to student-athletes who had previously competed at non-NCAA schools.

Yaxel Lendeborg had spent three years at Arizona Western before two years at UAB. Under the old rules, he was out of eligibility. Under the new ruling, he had one more year. He did not ask for it. He did not file the lawsuit. An opportunity landed in his lap that did not exist when he chose to stay at UAB.

He entered the 2025 NBA Draft process and the transfer portal simultaneously. Draft projections had him as a late first-round pick — borderline. He could have gone pro. First-round money was possible. But so was sliding to the early second round, where contracts are not guaranteed and careers can end before they start.

Michigan coach Dusty May offered him a path. A reported $2-3 million NIL deal, development in a Power 4 program and a stage that NBA scouts watch every night. Kentucky offered more — Lendeborg told the Associated Press the number was $7-9 million. He chose Michigan.

"He didn't talk about money at all," Lendeborg said of May. "It was all about making me better and helping me achieve my goals."

He withdrew from the draft on May 27, 2025. The No. 1 transfer in college basketball headed to Ann Arbor.

He won Big Ten Player of the Year — the first Michigan player to earn it since 2014 — and led the Wolverines to a national championship, Michigan's first since 1989. Consensus All-American. He averaged 15.1 points and 6.8 rebounds while shooting 37 percent from three and anchoring Michigan's defense.

And then he went No. 11 in the draft.

"I feel like the smartest man alive," he told ESPN. "Bet on yourself. I know it's cliche and all, but this is truly a gamble."

The gamble paid off in ways that will reshape his family's future. The No. 11 pick on the 2026 rookie scale carries a four-year contract worth nearly $29 million. That is generational money. For a kid who was working in a warehouse after high school, whose mother drove him to junior college every day and is now battling Stage 4 appendix cancer, whose basketball career started because his friends talked him into trying out — $29 million in guaranteed money changes the trajectory of a family.

"Every emotion possible," he said on draft night, in tears. "I don't deserve to be here right now. I can't believe it."

I know how it feels to watch a player leave. I cover UAB. I cover the programs that develop talent and then watch Power 4 schools poach the players those programs found and built.

This is the defining tension for every fan base outside the Power 4. I wrote about it earlier this month — the portal is rewriting record books before the ink is dry. G6 programs find players, develop them, build something real and then lose them to schools with deeper pockets and bigger stages. The legends who would have defined a program for decades now leave before the story is finished. Marshall Faulk stays at San Diego State for three years in 1994. In 2026, he is gone after one.

That is the reality. It is not going away. And for most departures, the sting is earned — because the player was passing through, and everyone knew it.

But Yaxel Lendeborg's story does not fit that frame.

He did not use UAB as a stepping stone. He stayed a second year when he could have left. He graduated. He turned down seven-figure offers to come back. When an unexpected extra year of eligibility appeared — a year created by someone else's lawsuit, not his choice — he made a decision that any rational person with a family to support would understand. And he chose Michigan over Kentucky because he said he wanted to develop as a player and person, not just collect a check.

Kennedy knows what he built. "Love Yax," Kennedy told Diehard Sports Network. "Blessed to be part of his journey and excited to see all that he continues to accomplish." On draft night, UAB's head coach posted: "These are The Moments We All Strive 4. Yax realizing his Best Version of Self. SO Proud for him." Green heart emoji. UAB green.

The program's official account posted a congratulations graphic with Yaxel in his Blazers No. 3 jersey. "UAB grad Yaxel Lendeborg is headed to the Warriors." Not "former UAB player." UAB grad. The school is claiming him.

As @GoldnTickit — one of the loudest and most passionate social-media voices in the UAB fan base — put it on X: "Yaxel declined 7 figure NIL deals to return to UAB for what he believed was his final year of college eligibility. Don't punish a guy for being gifted another year and not declining millions of dollars a second time."

UAB poured into Yaxel and he loved them back. Michigan developed him further. Arizona Western started the whole thing. Every program that touched him helped build a No. 11 pick — and none of them should pretend otherwise.

The wins and the numbers go in a media guide. In this era — when any player can leave for any reason — what survives is how a player made a fan base feel. The moments only the people in the building got to experience.

Dusty May — who left Michigan for the Dallas Mavericks after the national championship — said something about Lendeborg that captures why those relationships stick: "He's a really gentle, kind soul. I've never seen anyone in my 25 years in college basketball give fans as much time as he does."

UAB fans know that. They experienced it for two years at Bartow Arena. The dance moves after dunks. The arms spread wide after beating Memphis. The nickname he embraced because the fan base loved him enough to give him one.

The portal can move a player. It cannot move what happened between that player and a fan base. Lord Lendeborg belongs to Bartow Arena — and he always will, unless UAB fans decide to give that away because he played somewhere else for one more year before the NBA.

Claim him, Blazer Nation.

"Dream big," he said when asked what he would tell his 10-year-old self. "Dream big. There's a lot out there for you and don't beat yourself up too much. Just believe everything your mom says, because everything she said came to be true."

He is the highest draft pick in UAB basketball history.

Make sure nobody forgets where it started.

Sources: ESPN, NBC Sports Bay Area, CBS-42 Birmingham, Yahoo Sports, CBS Sports, Fox Sports, SI, Hoops HQ, ABC 3340, UAB Athletics, Associated Press