Yaxel Lendeborg’s parents, both former Dominican Republic basketball players, passed down the athletic DNA behind his rise.
Yaxel Lendeborg is quickly becoming a standout name in college basketball.
The 6’9″ forward, born Yaxel Okari Lendeborg on September 30, 2002, in Puerto Rico, currently plays for the Michigan Wolverines, a team in the Big Ten Conference.
His journey to Ann Arbor, however, was anything but straightforward — and his parents played an outsized role in shaping it.
Lendeborg launched his collegiate career at Arizona Western, a junior college in Yuma, Arizona.
Despite a rocky start, he transformed into one of the most dominant players in the NJCAA.
Over three seasons, he averaged as high as 17.2 points and an NJCAA-leading 13.0 rebounds per game, earned back-to-back ACCAC Player of the Year honors, and left as the NJCAA’s all-time leading rebounder with 429 total boards.
Yaxel, who possesses American and Dominican descent, then transferred to the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2023, where he elevated his game even further.
In two seasons with the Blazers, Lendeborg averaged double-doubles, claimed the American Athletic Conference Defensive Player of the Year award twice, and set a UAB single-season record with 420 rebounds.
He became only the second player in NCAA Division I history — joining Larry Bird — to record 600 points, 400 rebounds, and 150 assists in a single season.
In April 2025, Lendeborg transferred to the University of Michigan to play under head coach Dusty May.
He passed on the NBA Draft — where projections had him as a potential first-round pick — to complete his college career.
At Michigan, he earned Big Ten Player of the Year honors for the 2025–26 season and guided the team to a 19–1 Big Ten regular season record, cementing his reputation as one of the most versatile big men in college basketball.
Yaxel Lendeborg’s Parents Yissel Raposo And Okary Lendeborg Passed Down His Basketball Talent
Yaxel Lendeborg’s parents are not merely background figures in his story — they are the foundation of it.
Both competed at the highest levels of Dominican Republic basketball, and their athletic DNA, sacrifices, and influence directly shaped the player and person Yaxel has become.
His mother Yissel Raposo stands as the most influential figure in Yaxel Lendeborg’s life.
She grew up competing in both basketball and volleyball, took her talents to the American University of Puerto Rico, and ultimately represented the Dominican Republic national teams in both sports.
Raposo was still an active student-athlete when she gave birth to Yaxel on the Puerto Rican campus — earning him the informal title of “the baby of the college,” often photographed with a ball in his tiny hands.
After graduating, Raposo relocated the family to Cincinnati, Ohio, chasing a job opportunity, and later moved again to Pennsauken, New Jersey, following her then-husband’s career.
Through every transition, she continued pouring her energy into her children. She worked multiple jobs — including at a factory that manufactured phone accessories — and carried the weight of the family largely on her own.
At one point, she brought a teenage Yaxel to her factory floor and asked him directly: is this the life you want? The message landed.
Raposo never lost faith in her son’s NBA potential, even when he showed little interest in developing it.
She bought him NBA-branded clothing as a child, asked him regularly about his dreams, and took careful note when he consistently answered: “NBA.”
When Yaxel drifted through high school — sleeping in class, accumulating suspensions, and spending up to 19 hours a day on video games — she did not give up.
Instead, she staged one of the most pivotal interventions of his life.
During his senior year, Raposo picked him up one night, stripped his room of every comfort — TV, gaming consoles, clothes, and even the bedroom door — and had a tearful, unflinching conversation in the car.
She invoked the memory of her late father, Yaxel’s beloved “Papa,” and demanded that her son complete ten community college courses in a year to graduate and change his trajectory.
Yaxel has since credited that night as the moment that “saved my life.” He graduated, dramatically improved his grades, and made it onto the Pennsauken varsity team for the final eleven games of his senior season.
Raposo’s influence did not stop at high school. She used her connections in the Dominican basketball community to secure Yaxel an invitation to a talent-evaluation showcase in New York.
He performed brilliantly, catching the eye of Arizona Western assistant coach Kyle Isaacs.
Raposo negotiated that opportunity — despite Yaxel’s reluctance — into a full scholarship.
When the departure date arrived, she threw him a going-away party and sent him on his first solo flight. He cried the entire way to Arizona.
Even through his difficult freshman year in Yuma — when he called her repeatedly wanting to quit — Raposo refused to let him come home.
Her persistence paid off in ways that now fill highlight reels and pre-draft boards. Yaxel acknowledges her role completely:
“All that I do, anything I have or will accomplish, I owe it all to her. She is my guardian angel. My hero.”
As a symbol of that gratitude, he gifted her a brand-new Jeep — her dream car — ahead of the 2025 holiday season.
In early 2026, Yaxel revealed in a deeply personal Players’ Tribune article that Raposo had been diagnosed with cancer several months prior.
True to her character, she had hidden the diagnosis — completing chemotherapy sessions in secret — so that it would not disrupt his Michigan season.
When she finally told him, he broke down. He has since described her as “the strongest person I know” and made clear that every game he plays, he plays for her.
Okary Lendeborg is Yaxel’s father and, like Raposo, a former standout basketball player from the Dominican Republic.
He built a notable career throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, competing for the Dominican Republic national basketball team and playing professionally in the country’s National Basketball League.
His commitment to the game ran so deep that he was away on a playing assignment when Yaxel was born in Puerto Rico in 2002 — meaning he missed his son’s birth entirely.
Okary’s career later brought the family from Ohio to Pennsauken, New Jersey, when Yaxel was around eight years old.
Both Okary and Raposo stood approximately 6 feet 4 inches tall, and Yaxel — now 6 feet 9 inches with a 7-foot-4 wingspan — openly credits his natural athleticism to both parents.
“I do have some natural ability that just comes from my parents, I guess,” Yaxel has said. “I’m super grateful about that.”
However, the relationship between Yaxel and his father has been strained over the years.
Yaxel has referenced household tensions and arguments that led him to spend much of his troubled teenage years away from home.
Raposo worked to mediate between them, hoping they would find common ground, but their dynamic never developed the same warmth that defined Yaxel’s bond with his mother.
In interviews and personal writings, Yaxel speaks of Okary primarily in the context of inherited athletic ability rather than direct mentorship or emotional support.
Despite the complicated personal dynamic, Okary Lendeborg’s basketball legacy lives in his son’s DNA.
The same instincts that made Okary a fixture in Dominican basketball — the physicality, the court awareness, the competitive drive — now manifest in one of the most complete big men in college basketball.
Yaxel grew up in a household where sports were not optional; both parents treated athletic pursuit as a way of life from the very beginning.
