Why Warriors rookie Yaxel Lendeborg was benched after being 'peer pressured' into chasing 40 against Clippers

Steve Kerr yanked Lendeborg with two minutes to play as the Clippers cut a 21-point lead to eight Golden State Warriors rookie Yaxel Lendeborg has been a revelation to open his NBA career. Through his first seven games, he's putting up historic numbers, and he somehow keeps one-upping himself. On Sunday, he played his best game yet: 37 points on 85% true shooting. He made six of his 11 3-pointers and added six assists. He was outrageously good, as he has been all season, save for the Lakers game last Friday in which he was properly hazed by Luka Dončić. Other than that, it's been nothing but buckets for Lendeborg, who, given how easily all this has seemingly come for him, perhaps got a little ahead of himself by chasing the 40-point round number on Sunday with a couple of, shall we say, questionable shots at the end.

Steve Kerr saw it, and with 2:14 to play, he benched his rookie as the Clippers were starting to make a desperate run, cutting a 21-point Warriors lead to eight over a two-minute span during which Lendeborg missed three 3-pointers, two of which were total chuck jobs. "He would've had 40 if we had just kept playing [normally]," Kerr said after the game. "The NBA game these days can change like that.