Curry rested his right knee in Phoenix, and Yaxel Lendeborg took the offense
Golden State rested Curry with his right knee listed on the third game in four days, and Lendeborg scored 26 in 36 minutes, which moved him from 161st to 102nd on our points board.
By James · 3 min read
Stephen CurryYaxel LendeborgDe'Anthony MeltonPhotos: NBA, ESPNFreeGolden State lost 131-122 in Phoenix on Saturday, its third game in four days, and rested Stephen Curry, Brandin Podziemski, Draymond Green and Al Horford, according to Yahoo Sports and the San Francisco Chronicle. Curry's absence was listed under his right knee, the same knee that cost him 27 games last season with runner's knee, and nothing reported since says anything more than that it was a rest day. He had played 30 minutes the night before against Memphis, scoring 24 points with 11-for-11 from the line, in the box score our projections read from ESPN.
- Stephen Curry GSW34thvs 32nd
- Yaxel Lendeborg GSW102ndvs 147th
- De'Anthony Melton GSW158thvs 167th
With four regulars out, rookie Yaxel Lendeborg played 36 minutes and scored 26 points with nine rebounds, five assists and six threes, and De'Anthony Melton scored 25 on 8-for-13 shooting. For fantasy managers the two questions are how worried to be about Curry's knee and whether Lendeborg's three games are enough to roster him, and our projections give a fairly clear answer to the second.
| Last three games | Projected minutes | Our points rank, Thursday | Now | Our 9-cat rank, now | Consensus points | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stephen Curry | 2 games, 23 and 24 points | 30.9 | 44th | 34th | 18th | 32nd |
| Yaxel Lendeborg | 12, 18 and 26 points | 30.7 | 161st | 102nd | 101st | 147th |
| De'Anthony Melton | 0, 10 and 25 points | 25.1 | 176th | 158th | 158th | 167th |
Curry's knee
A rest day on the third night in four is what a team does with a 38-year-old in October, and Golden State plays next on Monday in Denver, so the next sign is whether Curry plays there. Our projections do not count a rest day as a sign of anything, since they leave out a day-to-day or rest designation and only take games off for a player listed out, and they have him at 61.5 games, 25.8 points and 4.4 threes, 34th on our points board under ESPN's standard scoring and 18th in 9-cat. That 61.5 already assumes he will miss about twenty games, and a rested knee in late October is the kind of absence that number was built to contain. We wrote after his preseason ankle sprain that the knee was the injury to worry about, and that remains the right way to read it: a second listing on the knee would be the time to adjust, not the first.
Lendeborg has earned a roster spot
Lendeborg's minutes have gone 29, 37 and 36, and his scoring has risen with them. Our projection of his minutes has moved from 25.3 before the season to 30.7, with 13.8 points, 7.0 rebounds and 1.6 threes, and he has gone from 161st to 102nd on our points board in two nights, against 147th in the analysts' consensus. We said in the preseason that he was the most likely of that month's standouts to keep real minutes, and three games in he has. The risk is the obvious one: Saturday's 36 minutes came with four regulars resting, and when Podziemski and Green return, some of them go away. Even so, his projection was moving up before Saturday, on 37 minutes and 13 rebounds against Memphis.
Melton
Melton's 25 points came in 27 minutes with four threes and three steals, but they followed nights of 0 and 10, and our projection moved him only from 176th to 158th. He is a streaming option on nights when Golden State rests its guards, not a hold.
What to do
Add Lendeborg in twelve-team leagues if he is still on your wire, and in deeper leagues he is a start every night. Hold Curry and start him on Monday if he is active, and check Golden State's injury report on Monday afternoon before you lock your lineup.
Every player in this story is on the fantasy basketball rankings and the 2026-27 projections, and the NBA depth charts show where each one stands in his team’s rotation tonight.
