Michigan basketball: Could Yaxel Lendeborg be third Wolverine drafted?

The Michigan Wolverines and their national championship contingent of stars are three weeks away from the 2026 NBA Draft, and it seems each of forward Yaxel Lendeborg and Morez Johnson Jr. and center Aday Mara has taken turns in the spotlight.

This time around, Yahoo’s Kevin O’Connor has Mara going first in his latest mock draft, coming off the board at No. 11 overall to the Golden State Warriors. The elite rim-protecting center and Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year averaged 12.1 points, 6.8 rebounds and 2.4 assists for the champs this season.

“The Warriors need a true center,” he wrote. “There is no better option in this range than Mara, who stepped on UCLA’s campus as a lottery-projected center from Spain. Then he fell off draft boards during two forgettable seasons there before transferring to Michigan and becoming one of the best true 5s in the country on his way to winning the national championship. He reads the floor like a guard, finishes with both hands, and swats shots with elite timing. The complication is he doesn’t shoot from outside, makes below 60% of his free throws, and opponents are going to attack him on the perimeter.”

Lendeborg, the biggest star of this season’s championship run, averaged 15.1 points, 6.8 rebounds and 3.2 assists this season en route to a Big Ten Player of the Year nod and All-American praise. He heads to the Miami Heat at No. 13 in this mock scenario. Even though he is second off the board here, O’Connor speculates that he might be the third of the three Michigan stars taken.

“The Heat hosted Lendeborg for a workout in recent days, according to league sources,” O’Connor said. “There is a belief in league circles that Lendeborg could end up being the third Michigan prospect selected on draft night – behind Aday Mara and Morez Johnson, who is rising on draft boards – but for now he holds his slot in the lottery for this mock.

“Lendeborg has a compelling story. Poor grades kept him off his high school varsity team. He went to a JUCO. Then UAB. Then he entered the draft, went through the combine, pulled his name back, and came back for one more year at Michigan and won a national championship. He just kept getting better every single time the competition got harder. He fills the stat sheet, he can play multiple positions, and he has a 7-foot-4 wingspan at 241 pounds with a genuine handle. But he’ll be 24 as a rookie. The arc is a great story. Whether it ends with NBA stardom is still up for debate.”

Rounding things out is Johnson, coming off the board to the Charlotte Hornets at No. 14 overall, largely seen as one of the up-and-coming teams in the Eastern Conference. Johnson averaged 13.7 points, 7.3 rebounds and 1.2 assists for the Wolverines this year.

“You know the guy on a championship team who never gets enough credit nationally? The one who sets the bone-crushing screen that springs the star, then immediately sprints to the rim for the lob, then turns around and blows up the other team’s pick-and-roll on the other end all in one sequence? That’s Morez Johnson,” O’Connor said. “He transferred from Illinois to Michigan and became the connective tissue of the national champions as a 251-pound wrecking ball with surprisingly soft hands and the defensive IQ to guard 1 through 5 in a switch-heavy scheme. And the Hornets are in need of someone with Johnson’s multi-position versatility since Miles Bridges, Josh Green, and Grant Williams all have just one more season on their contracts. The issue with Johnson is he’s not quite big enough to be a true center and not yet proven enough as a shooter to guarantee he spaces the floor. But even without a jumper, Johnson has a long future ahead of him at the next level – and that is why league sources say his stock is on the rise into the mid-late lottery range.”

This year’s NBA Draft is set for June 23-24 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, over two nights, splitting the first and second rounds.