Your questions answered. Hopefully.
It’s a quiet time of year in the NBA, and no team has been more quiet than the Golden State Warriors. So it isn’t too surprising that when I put out a call for a mailbag, I didn’t get too many responses. But I did get a few, so thanks to everyone who dropped some great Qs.
And while it has been a quiet month for the Warriors, it hasn’t been one for the Golden State Valkyries. So let’s start there…
First off, thank you for this — both the kind words, and the suggestion. And out of respect, I’ll be fully transparent with my answer here.
My goal going into the season was to cover the Valkyries as closely as I cover the Warriors, with recaps for every game, analysis, newsers on all the trades, etc. But, in full transparency, the Warriors season wiped my out pretty hard this year, and for those of you who don’t know, I also run our sister site, McCovey Chronicles. It’s been a very busy Giants season, and that’s taken up a lot of my summer (hence the lack of content here, not just for the Valkyries but also the Warriors).
So, I’m going to try to change that. The Valkyries are awesome, and no WNBA fanbase is better than Golden State’s. What the team is doing is historical for an expansion franchise, and they’ve been as fun to watch as they are a good story. I’ll make sure we have more Valkyries content going forward — and I really appreciate the open desire for it.
I understand the sentiment, but no can do, boss. First and foremost, I just don’t see the need. This is a Golden State site, not a Warriors site. The Warriors and Valkyries don’t have overlapping seasons, but they do have overlapping courts, facilities, ownership, and, critically, fans. Why shouldn’t they be together? This is a site where anyone with a love of Bay Area professional hoops can come and hopefully get what they’re looking for.
Besides, building an entirely new site is a pricy venture, and that price is warranted when there’s a perfectly good place for the content.
This one wasn’t a question, but rather a comment in a conversation that followed from the previous question. And I just wanted to address it, because it includes some common misconceptions that are often bandied when the W is being discussed.
First, I need to point out a contradiction that you made, and that many do. It doesn’t really make sense to say that women’s basketball can’t stand on its own feet, but that it’s supported because it’s an investment. Those sentiments contradict each other; if it’s not capable of making money, then it’s not an investment opportunity.
Second, the NBA “support” is a rather sizable misunderstanding. The NBA is not a company — it’s an association of dozens of companies. So it can’t really operate as an investor. The WNBA is simply one leg of the conglomerate, along with the G League, NBA Cares, etc. etc.
Third, and most important, the WNBA is profitable. Every few weeks some ill-informed person will take to social media to claim that it exists only on NBA subsidies and that it’s hemorrhaging money, but that isn’t actually the case. The WNBA is doing quite well — far better than the NBA was doing at this stage in its life. Most of the teams are profitable, and valuations are soaring — the Valkyries, for instance, have a higher valuation than the Warriors did when Joe Lacob and Peter Guber bought the team 15 years ago.
There’s also a misconception that the NBA is a cash cow through and through, which is only partially the case. While the NBA, as a whole, backs the Brinks truck up to the bank daily, there are still a handful of teams that lose money every year and only recoup it with … wait for it … revenue sharing! The NBA, as a whole, is supporting some of its own teams that are otherwise leaking millions of dollars annually. So I’d say we should probably stop worrying about the WNBA, where the teams aren’t actually losing money.
Anyway, no one is force-feeding the Valkyries on you.
There’s always a little angst when a restricted free agency drags on this long — remember Patrick McCaw? But I think it’s safe to say that the angst and drama surrounding Jonathan Kuminga’s restricted free agency is more than Cam Thomas, Quentin Grimes, and Josh Giddey’s, combined.
For those three, the situation is much more clear. By all indications, each of those three players wants to return to their team, and their team wants them back. So it’s just a matter of finding a price point where everyone is happy. That’s certainly much nicer than Kuminga’s situation.
I do think there will be something of a domino effect, though. They’re all likely to end up with contracts in the same realm as each other, and with so much of free agency already past, it’s unlikely that other teams swoop in to complicate matters (except for with Kuminga). So one may set the market, and the rest will go from there.
It’s always a great mystery! NBA players live in the spotlight for most of the year, and most of them are pretty happy to remove themselves from it, with the exception of free agents who are trying to get a little hype with some empty gym workout videos.
So we really don’t know much beyond what they show us on social media, which is usually just trips, parties, and golf. For the Warriors, though, Steph Curry, Draymond Green, and Jimmy Butler III having relaxing summers is really the best prep we could possibly hope for.
Haven’t seen either of them linked to Kuminga. I don’t think Charlotte has anything that would make a sign-and-trade enticing to the Dubs. I thought maybe we’d get some Kuminga and Lauri Markkanen rumors, but it seems like that won’t be happening.
Then again, as this process has shown, teams tend to emerge out of nowhere. So never say never.