From 12 hours of video games a day to Big Ten Player of the Year: The unlikely rise of Yaxel Lendeborg

Back in high school, Yaxel Lendeborg wasn’t even on the basketball team (and had even been cut from the middle-school team) and played video games 12-14 hours each day. 

Now, the Michigan Wolverines Forward is the Big Ten Player of the Year—referred to as “The Dominican LeBron”—and is set to take on the Alabama Crimson Tide in the Sweet 16 on Friday.

His journey from the couch to the court is the kind of story coaches tell recruits to illustrate the success that can come from a single decision. Ahead of his senior year of high school, Lendeborg’s mother, Yissel Raposo, learned her son wasn’t on track to graduate, so she had a heart-to-heart conversation with him that served as a “wake-up call,” she told Hoops HQ in a December 2025 profile of the player. 

It was a decision that largely paid off: Lendeborg’s grades dramatically improved when he enrolled in Camden County College, so much so that he was able to join the varsity basketball team for the final 11 games of his senior season. These were the only 11 high school basketball games Lendeborg ever played.

Right after high school, Lendeborg started working with his mother at a cell-phone accessory warehouse, but felt guilty about not doing more. 

“It kind of hurt being in that space with my mom, seeing how much she’s been doing for us,” the 6-foot, 9-inch, 240-pound player told Hoops HQ. “So it was like, damn, I really messed my life up. And I’m not helping my mom out.”

That’s when everything changed. 

Yaxel Lendeborg’s career timeline

Through the grapevine, coaches at Arizona Western College learned of Lendeborg. Although he wasn’t thrilled to be going, according to Hoops HQ, Lendeborg shipped himself off to Arizona, where he played 78 games in three seasons from 2020 to 2023. There, he was a two-time NJCAA All-American and won the ACCAC Player of the Year award twice. 

In April 2023, Lendeborg transferred to the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he helped the school earn the 2024 American Conference Tournament Title. He also earned AAC Tournament MVP honors, was named AAC Defensive Player of the Year twice, and helped the school reach the NCAA Tournament, among several other accolades.

Then in April 2025, Lendeborg committed to the University of Michigan, joining what would become the top team in the country under head coach Dusty May. His debut was somewhat injury-limited, but he quickly became Michigan’s star player. He averages 14.7 points, 6.9 rebounds, and 3.2 assists per game, according to ESPN, and led Michigan to a 19-1 Big 10 record (and 33-3 overall), the program’s first regular-season title since 2020-2021. 

This March, he was named Big Ten Player of the Year and helped Michigan earn the No. 1 seed in the Midwest Regional for this year’s March Madness tournament. Now, he’s projected as a first-round NBA draft pick.

A late bloomer who caught fire

Lendeborg’s success story defies the typical blue-chip narrative in basketball recruiting. Typically, recruiters are after a 4- or 5-star player who has been heavily scouted since middle or early high school, appears on national rankings lists, and gets dozens of scholarship offers from top programs before their senior year. 

Instead, Lendeborg, now 23, developed much later than his peers. This meant he had to outwork players with years of structured training—and now he’s competing in what’s widely considered the most physically demanding conference in college basketball. But Michigan basketball coach Dusty May says Lendeborg deserves every ounce of recognition he’s getting.

“I think it’s pretty obvious why he’s player of the year,” May told CBS reporter Tracy Wolfson in early March. “He does everything on the basketball court, and he’s incredibly unselfish while doing it. And he’s just scratching the surface of how good he can be.”

The business of breaking through

Lendeborg’s unlikely rise can serve as a compelling lesson for the business world, too. Talent without focus is just potential. For years, Lendeborg had the innate talent to perform at a high level, but lacked the motivation.

A 2007 study by American academic and psychologist Angela L. Duckworth shows that grit can be just as important in determining success as talent. 

“The achievement of difficult goals entails not only talent, but also the sustained and focused application of talent over time,” she and her co-authors wrote in the study.

So, it wasn’t until Lendeborg committed to “sustained and focused” training that he met his big break, and it’s all paying off. 

Not only has Lendeborg earned numerous accolades in recent years, but his hard work is also paying off. His name, image, and likeness (NIL) valuation is estimated at $2 million, according to On3, ranking him among the top 25 in college sports overall and No. 7 in basketball. 

But Lendeborg also said in a March interview with the Associated Press he had turned down an NIL deal from Kentucky worth $7 million to $9 million dollars to stay with May and the Wolverines. That’s because he was prioritizing his long-term goals over money.

“I was raised without it, and I went my whole life without it,” Lendeborg told the AP. “Anything was going to make me super, super happy at the time.”

“I was thinking long term. What if I mess up my career because I chased the money instead of a future? Another big reason why I went with Dusty was he didn’t talk about money at all,” he continued. “It was all about making me better and helping me achieve my goals.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com