The most improbable tale of the 2026 NBA draft is the rise of Yaxel Lendeborg: an NCAA champion turned projected lottery pick who didn't get serious about basketball until he was 18 years old -- and will have a video game to thank when Adam Silver calls his name Tuesday night in Brooklyn, New York.
"I learned so much through NBA 2K, so I kind of just understood the whole game of basketball because of that," he told ESPN. "As far as real life basketball, it was definitely a little bit of an adjustment, just trying to get my footwork down. I was traveling a lot throughout that time. I remember, specifically, my first dunk in a game was actually a travel."
The video game obsession turned into a fascination with basketball and, eventually, a vision centered around the sport he discovered long after he had first developed a love for baseball.
The raw, evolving prospect started at Arizona Western College in 2020 -- a few short years after picking up a basketball for the first time -- before transferring to UAB in 2023, where he racked up enough accolades to earn the attention of NBA teams. He went on to enter the 2025 NBA draft but ultimately withdrew and transferred to Michigan, where a seven-figure deal awaited.
He was a borderline first-round pick then. Now, he has a green room invitation as one of the top prospects on the board -- a trajectory only made possible by the dawn of the NIL and revenue sharing era of college sports.
"I didn't feel like I was comfortable enough to even step foot in the NBA with a bunch of guys that are already established in the league and have played for a long time and have much better habits than I do," he said. "Do I believe that I'll go in there and make an impact immediately, or if I'm going to be there, will I just throw the whole dream away?"
"I've had guys who fought through the G League and made the NBA, fought through two-way contracts and made the NBA," said Ron Shade, Lendeborg's agent and the vice president of basketball at Octagon. "I just don't think Yax wanted to do that at the time where he was in his life and in his career."
Lendeborg ended up leading the Wolverines to their first national championship since 1989, with an All-American and Big Ten Player of the Year campaign that captivated NBA executives with the versatility he displayed at 6-foot-9 and 230 pounds.
His decision to reject a more complicated path through the NBA's development system a year ago changed the trajectory of his career. It is also the premier example of a strategy others have leveraged to raise their respective stocks. A past generation of mid-to-late first round, early second-round prospects who didn't have an opportunity to cash checks at the college level would have gambled on their NBA futures and entered the draft before they were ready. But Lendeborg's success at Michigan (15.1 PPG) showcased the strengths of the collegiate development model -- and the increasing limitations of the NBA's.
"The only guys that are leaving now are guys that are guaranteed to be top picks," said Brian Thornton, the Big 12's chief basketball officer. "The NBA is getting a more developed product. They're getting a guy who is not the 19-year-old prospect anymore. They're getting a 22-year-old guy who has been through it, has played 150 college games and his body is mature. They're getting a guy who's ready to play now."
For Lendeborg, life in Ann Arbor was automatic.
His mornings started with breakfast, prepped by the team's nutritionist, followed by 11 a.m. workouts with associate head coach Mike Boynton and other staffers, then practices inside a $10 million facility. Jacob Kohn, Michigan's director of analytics, could tell Lendeborg where to focus his energy. And Matt Aldred, the strength and conditioning coach, prepared the workouts that helped Lendeborg pack more muscle onto his frame. He also had access to a psychologist and doctors attached to one of the best medical schools in the world.
"You've got the top-notch of everything you could want as far as if you need development and care," Boynton said, "which in some ways, and a lot of times, it's probably more than you get in the NBA."
The commitment from programs such as Michigan has helped colleges bridge the gap as a development alternative to the NBA's system.
In 2019, 233 early entrants (including 175 college basketball players) declared for the NBA draft. Seven years later, that number plummeted to just 71 early entrants (60 college basketball players). There are clear and more complicated reasons for the decline.
The NIL packages available to players have changed the landscape. Delaying a draft decision to continue development at the college level not only gives players a shot at lucrative compensation before turning pro but sets them up to make even more money down the road. The difference between the rookie deals offered to the 12th pick, where Lendeborg is projected this year, and the 30th pick, close to where he was expected to be drafted in 2025, was more than $11 million based on data at Spotrac.
Alex Condon, projected as a late first- or early second-round pick before he withdrew from the 2026 NBA draft, not only returned to chase his second national championship with Florida -- but because he knew he would have the cash to invest in his development.
"I'm moving into a new house and I'm buying a cold tub," he told ESPN. "I've got a pool there so I can do anything recovery-wise in that. I'm also getting a steam room, just stuff that you can spend on your body to make you feel a little bit better when you're out there on the court."
Condon also knew the Gators, who return the nucleus of the 2025 title-winning roster for the second year in a row, could offer him a role that wouldn't be guaranteed in the G League.
"Our offense runs primarily through [me], the guy who's at the top," he said. "It just makes me a better player because I get more touches with the ball and make more decisions and I feel like that's just going to go a long way in the long run."
Added Vanderbilt's Tyler Tanner, who also withdrew from the draft without a first-round guarantee: "You definitely have to weigh all of the factors. Would you rather play a couple minutes per game, maybe at the end of NBA games and blowouts -- or come back, work on your game, get to play 30 plus minutes per night and just improve?"
The goal is longevity, not an NBA contract. And the current climate of collegiate athletics allows Lendeborg -- and others like him -- to take their time and leave for the NBA when they feel ready.
"I want to stay [in the NBA] for a very long time," Lendeborg said. "So that's something I was telling all the guys that were recruiting me after UAB. I just wanted to go back, but not just to win, but I actually wanted to develop into a real basketball player with pro habits, a pro mindset, pro everything."
While it's the best of both worlds for players on the fence about their pro futures, NBA decision-makers are still trying to make sense of everything that's unfolding.
The new NIL landscape wouldn't have made Shareef Abdur-Rahim change his mind. As the No. 3 pick in the 1996 NBA draft following a Pac-12 Player of the Year season at Cal, he made $2.1 million as a rookie and amassed more than $100 million throughout a 12-year career.
But now as the president of the NBA's G League, he knows those decisions aren't as simple for prospects with later projections and more options.
"I think it's situational," he told ESPN. "The teams need to use it to develop players and players will use it to find an opportunity. The players who are going to play in the G League and need that opportunity for however long, I think we're still seeing them come through our league."
The NIL landscape ended the G League's Ignite program, which catered to top high school prospects who wanted to make money before they reached the next level without attending college. That crop of prospects is now in colleges around the country, making millions.
The G League overall, however, has historically been a launchpad for young draft picks who craved more time to develop and fringe prospects who needed a proving ground. Which (and how many) players fit the bill of the latter group has become more convoluted as droves of players such as Lendeborg wait to enter the draft pool. But Abdur-Rahim said the G League remains a critical component of the NBA's development model, especially with limited roster spots for young players.
Abdur-Rahim said 60% of 2025 first-round picks played in the G League. He also pointed to examples such as Oklahoma City Thunder guard Jared McCain, who played in the G League before his star turn in the playoffs.
"Our numbers and players being called up from the G League are actually going up," Abdur-Rahim said. "It's not going down. So just in the metrics, I think all of it says the talent is still there. The teams still value the talent, by far, and they're still using it to develop their players and to send players there."
The evolving shape of the development pipeline has changed the way some teams evaluate prospects. More seniors have gotten looks as more players without lottery guarantees have exited the field in recent years. That means the draft, especially outside the lottery, is more of a crapshoot than it has been in the past.
"It does hurt the second round, I think," one Western Conference executive said. "So now you're saying, do you go to Europe and try to see if you can get a guy there? But the NIL stuff is killing European basketball as well."
Still, there are many positives for college basketball and the pros. One NBA executive told ESPN his team monitors college players to see how they spend their NIL money and lead their teams. Those powerbrokers now also have more time to decide if a player is the right fit for their franchises, which has helped Lendeborg.
"Yax [going] back [to school] was one of the best things he could have ever done," one Eastern Conference executive said. "He was able to step out and demonstrate he could shoot the ball. He was able to determine and show us how switchable he was, how versatile he is on defense. So for us, I think it helps bring in seasoned guys who are more ready for the rigors of what's coming at him with 82 games."
Nevertheless, other NBA leaders maintain the league and its developmental system still offer an incomparable advantage to the players who enter and stay in the draft.
"If I'm in an NBA practice playing against Steph Curry, Draymond Green, all these dudes that I'm going against every day in practice or at least the first month of the season, that helps me," one Western Conference executive said. "Then you have all the rest of it, which is a higher level of everything."
That disparity was more apparent five years ago. With the amount of talent returning to school, leaders at the collegiate level believe they can rival the league's developmental system in that category, too.
By the time his team steamrolled San Diego State, Auburn and Gonzaga by 110 points combined at the Players Era event in Las Vegas in November, Lendeborg had started calling Michigan "the best team in college basketball."
Four months later, the Wolverines lived up to their star's proclamation by winning the NCAA championship with a 114-point combined margin of victory in six games.
That run included wins over teams also led by projected lottery and first-round picks. Lendeborg and the Wolverines beat Labaron Philon Jr. (17th) and Alabama in the Sweet 16, Nate Ament (10th) and Tennessee in the Elite Eight, Brayden Burries (9th) and Arizona in the Final Four and Tarris Reed Jr. (29th) and UConn in the national championship game. That collection of the opposing talent was the norm for Lendeborg, who had the added benefit of playing next to a pair of projected first-round selections in Aday Mara and Morez Johnson Jr.
Between top international prospects taking the college route and players who could earn NBA contracts remaining in school, college basketball's top brass believe it has the best developmental model and pool of prospects in the world outside of the NBA.
"I think it only helps," Arizona head coach Tommy Lloyd said about the improved landscape in Division I basketball. "I think the longer these kids get to stay in school, the better it is for them and the better it is for the game."
Added Vanderbilt coach Mark Byington: "NIL has opened college basketball up to the entire world for really good players not based in America, who are realizing this is their best option. So it's great for college basketball. The level and quality of players in college basketball is as good as it has ever been."
The level of competition mattered for Lendeborg, who said the money wasn't the only factor that swayed him to forgo the draft last year. He had offers for more than what Michigan promised. The chance to get better against future pros, learn from a dedicated staff and tap into a university rich with resources all made the decision to withdraw from the 2025 draft and move to Ann Arbor feel like an easy one.
He believed Michigan could make him a better pro than the NBA could.
As the confetti fell from the rafters of Lucas Oil Stadium after the Wolverines won the title in April, Lendeborg hugged his mother and thought about the choice he had made 10 months earlier.
He was no longer teaching himself through a video game.
Because of the path he chose, when the next NBA 2K is released this fall, Lendeborg will have a new player he can select and learn from: himself.
"I feel like the smartest man alive," he said. "Bet on yourself. I know it's cliché and all, but this is truly a gamble. I really gambled for my dream to put myself in a better position."