Curry Sat. The Rookie Dropped 37.

Stephen Curry sat this one out. So did Draymond Green. The rookie never got the memo that he was supposed to sit with them: Yaxel Lendeborg scored a career-high 37 points on Sunday night, and the Golden State Warriors beat the Los Angeles Clippers 124–112 at Chase Center for their fourth straight win.

UPDATE — Sunday, November 1, 2026: This story has been updated with the Golden State Warriors' official highlight reel of Lendeborg's 37-point night and a look back at the game that night now chases — Stephen Curry's 42-point finale to his rookie season, on April 14, 2010 — now with archival highlights of Curry's 42 embedded alongside the Warriors' reel.

The No. 11 pick in June's draft shot 13-for-19 from the field, 6-of-11 from three and 5-of-6 at the line, with six assists and four rebounds in 34 minutes. It was his second 30-point game in his first seven NBA games — this from a player who, as NBC Sports Bay Area pointed out, played 112 college games between UAB and Michigan and produced exactly one 30-point game in all of them. With two 30-point performances in his first seven games, the Associated Press noted, Lendeborg joins Hall of Famers Wilt Chamberlain and Rick Barry as the only Warriors ever to do it.

For a quarter, none of it looked likely. The Clippers ran out to a 37–29 lead after one, Golden State's threes rimming out and the home crowd sitting on its hands. Then Lendeborg took the second quarter personally. He scored 14 in the period — 19 by halftime, on 7-of-8 shooting, the game's leading scorer at the break — and a game the Warriors had been chasing flipped into a 63–57 lead they never gave back. Brandon Williams matched the energy off the bench with 12 first-half points of his own, and the team that had no Curry and no Green suddenly had all the answers.

Golden State of Mind's recap caught the sequence that summed the night up: on three straight plays, Lendeborg hit a mid-range fadeaway, buried a catch-and-shoot three at the top of the key, then put a Clipper on the floor with an ankle-breaker and drew the foul finishing the layup — three levels of scoring on three consecutive trips. Golden State of Mind also kept the night's historical receipt: by its accounting, the 37 points were the most by a Warriors rookie since Curry scored 42 in the final game of his rookie season.

It was not a one-man show, even if it felt like one. De'Anthony Melton scored 21 on 6-of-9 shooting — 6-of-8 from three — grabbed six rebounds and posted a game-high plus-20, and when the game tightened late it was Melton who closed the door, hitting back-to-back threes in the final minute and change. Brandin Podziemski ran the offense to the tune of 17 points, eight rebounds and eight assists. Williams finished with 17 off a bench that produced 40, and Charles Bassey, making his first start of the season, held the middle with six points and 10 rebounds.

The Clippers had their chances to make it uncomfortable. Golden State got careless in the third quarter — seven turnovers after committing five in the entire first half, as NBC Sports Bay Area logged it — and the lead was down to seven, 92–85, entering the fourth. An early fourth-quarter three took Lendeborg to 32, a new career high at that moment, and even after the Clippers' deep bench ripped off a 13–0 run to cut it to single digits inside the final two minutes, Melton's closing threes settled it. Rui Hachimura led Los Angeles with 24 points and seven rebounds; Kobe Sanders added 16 and Darius Garland 15 with seven assists. Kris Dunn, who spent much of the night attached to Lendeborg, piled up seven steals — and Lendeborg still finished with only two turnovers.

Context is what turns a box score into a story. Two nights earlier against the Lakers, Lendeborg scored six points, committed five turnovers and fouled out — a performance he himself called, per USA Today, the “worst game of my life.” Sunday was the response. It has been that kind of first month: at Denver on Oct. 26 he went for 31 points, 12 rebounds and six assists, the first Warriors rookie with a 30-point, 10-rebound, 5-assist game since Curry in February 2010. Steve Kerr's verdict after that one, relayed by ESPN's Anthony Slater, has aged well: “In all the critical spots, we put the ball in his hands. For a rookie to be that advanced already is extremely rare.”

The name at the top of that rookie list is worth a minute. On April 14, 2010 — the final game of Stephen Curry's rookie season — Golden State went into Portland with just six healthy players and won anyway, 122–116. Curry played all 48 minutes and finished with 42 points, nine rebounds and eight assists, and he closed the game himself: a three that put Golden State in front 98–96, another that made it 113–110, a baseline jumper that made it 115–112, and free throws in the final minute. Monta Ellis added 34. No rookie had recorded at least 42 points, nine rebounds and eight assists in one game since Oscar Robertson in February 1961.

Sixteen years on, the symmetry is hard to miss. Curry's 42 came on the last night of a lost season, for a team that dressed six healthy players. Lendeborg's 37 came with Curry himself resting, and it flipped a game Golden State was losing — the 14-point second quarter turned a 37–29 deficit into a lead the Warriors never gave back. By Golden State of Mind's accounting, it is the most points by a Warriors rookie in a game since that night in Portland. That is the company Sunday put him in.

Curry was out for rest and right-knee management on the front end of a back-to-back, Green for rest, and Jimmy Butler, Moses Moody and Kristaps Porzingis remained unavailable as they have been all season. It did not matter. Golden State shot 53 percent from the field and 22-of-49 from three, moved to 4–3 — a winning record for the first time since March 8 of last season — and sent the Clippers home at 1–5. Every number from this one lives in the Game Center. The homestand continues Monday night against Phoenix, when Curry and Green are expected back. The rookie has made sure they return to a team on a roll.