Mark Pope calls $7-$9 million offer to Yaxel Lendeborg “100% false”
Mark Pope makes it clear this story had no truth to it.
Michigan forward Yaxel Lendeborg (23) celebrates a 3-pointer against Saint Louis during the second half of NCAA Tournament Second Round at KeyBank Center in Buffalo on Saturday, March 21, 2026. | Junfu Han / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images Remember when Yaxel Lendeborg claimed Kentucky offered him $7-to-9 million in the last transfer portal cycle? And that he turned it down for way less to play for Michigan ?
It turns out that everyone with any sense who thought ‘that’s probably not true’ was correct. During his Monday radio show, Mark Pope denied the claim and made sure everyone knows there wasn’t an ounce of truth to it. “I don’t want to spend all my time chasing all the false stories.
I don’t want to be a fact-checker, but stories like that, for example, that story is 100% categorically false with no truth to it,” Pope stated. “I’m hesitant to, like, begin the process of grabbing every single thing that’s false, because there’s so much false narrative out there, and just chasing everyone. So, I’m hesitant to jump in there, but like, stories like that just aren’t true.
There’s no truth whatsoever to things like that. ” As we said before, Yaxel’s version of the story sounded more like some fake AI garbage your grandparents read on Facebook and asked you if it was true. We’ve seen plenty of those going around this season for Kentucky, including one claiming Collin Chandler donated all of his NIL pay to charity.