Let’s go Valkyries! No, really, LetsGoValkyries! That’s the name of the LGW off-shoot handle for the expansion Golden State Valkyries. I just haven’t had the time to announce it. I will, in due time.
But today is the WNBA Expansion Draft in less than an hour from this writing and we will do a livestream to accompany the coverage on ESPN. Meanwhile, here’s a transcript of the relevant parts of Kevin Pelton’s excellent analysis on the ESPN Daily podcast with Clinton Yates…
YATES: All right, Kevin, I got my notepad out. I am ready to learn and ready for you to lecture me and teach me how this stuff works. So who can the Valkyries pick and how do all the other teams in the league make sure they don’t lose their star players?
PELTON: So by last Monday, the teams had to submit a list of their six protected players for the Expansion Draft. And there’s a couple of wrinkles here. Number one, players who are unrestricted free agents are eligible, but Golden State can only select one of them. And the only reason they would do that is to use the Core Designation, which is very similar to the franchise tag in football. You get guaranteed a super- max salary for one year. But you’re not an unrestricted free agent who can go out and negotiate with other teams. So a lot of the stars do have to be protected, even if they’re unrestricted, although there are a few who aren’t eligible for the Draft at all because they’ve already been Core’d the maximum number of times or played on the Core Designation the maximum number of years. So you can sort of think of that as like when Kirk Cousins had played his two years on the franchise tag and then Washington couldn’t franchise tag him again. So there’s a handful of players you don’t have to worry about. But teams also have to protect anyone they drafted beforehand and players who they have the rights to, that didn’t play in the league last year. So it’s not just the top six players, necessarily, from last year’s rotations.
So are there any other nuances here that we should know about?
I think those are the big ones. The other interesting thing about this is, if Golden State selects someone in the Expansion Draft and cuts them before the start of the season, their salary doesn’t count against the Valkyries cap. So this is kind of an opportunity. I think we’re going to see this more if we have an NBA expansion draft on the road, but potentially for a team to get off a salary that’s maybe not as productive and clear some more cap space going into free agency in January.
So you mentioned, so the core player, as I understand, as you explained, it’s kind of like the franchise tag and you cannot join this team if you’ve been Core’d more than two times, right? So what players, fall under that category?
Yeah. And the important distinction here is it’s also if you’re going to be an unrestricted free agent this off- season. So Jonquel Jones would be an example of someone who has been a Core player for multiple years. She’s not eligible for that, but she’s under contract with the Liberty for next year. So the Valkyries can still draft her. The really important players who are not going to be eligible for this, Nneke Ongwumike with the Seattle Storm, DeWanna Bonner and Brionna Jones with the Connecticut Sun, who are both headed for unrestricted free agency, and then Brittney Griner with the Phoenix Mercury. So those players, Golden State can go out and sign them as free agents when free agency starts in January, but they can’t pick them in the Expansion Draft.
Okay, so who are some of the available players from other teams that you think the Valkyries have their eye on, and who’s the best of the bunch that they could possibly get right now?
Yeah, I think it’s going to be interesting. Like I said, probably a lot of young players from the end of benches who haven’t gotten a lot of opportunities. And some of them could be players who have been stars at the college level. I think Haley Jones, if the Atlanta Dream choose not to protect her, is someone that would make a lot of sense for the Valkyries. The star player on Stanford’s championship team several years ago, she’d be going back to the Bay Area. New York and Minnesota, the two teams that played in the WNBA Finals, they naturally have some of the deepest rosters and want to make sure they protect those veterans. And then there’s going to be some younger players that might not be protected. Minnesota probably has to choose between Diamond Miller, who was the No. 2 pick in the Draft in 2023, but didn’t play very much as they got to the Finals. Or Dorka Juhasz from UConn, who isn’t necessarily as highly regarded, was a 2nd Round pick, but was a key contributor for them in the playoffs. And New York, some similar decisions. We’ll see what happens there. But Marine Johannes, who’s been a star for them in past years, didn’t play this last season due to the Olympics. She’s someone who could be unprotected. So yeah, beyond who are they’re getting from the WNBA, there’s always a lot of talk about how there’s good players that get cut from rosters that are looking for jobs in the WNBA.
Can the Valkyries kind of go outside of the league and fill the roster a little bit?
Absolutely. They’ll be in free agency, just like everyone else. And that’s, I think, one of the interesting considerations is, how many players do they protect, because even though they can cut those players without respect to the salary cap, like we talked about, there is still a maximum number of players you can have on your roster in the off- season. So they may not necessarily want to select and end up with 12 players on their roster. And that’s what, I think, brings the potential of making trades with other teams into play.
So most of the league stars are unavailable. What is the actual objective here for Golden State? Like, what can they expect to get out of the WNBA Draft?
Yeah. So I think that they should probably be looking to try to accumulate as many future draft picks as possible. And that’s something that I think the Vegas Golden Knights were able to do. A number of teams traded them picks to ensure that some of their players weren’t selected and they sort of learned from that experience when the Kraken then went through the NHL Expansion Draft a couple of years later. But we mentioned Minnesota and New York with the quality players that they might have available. Those teams could be willing to offer some draft picks to make sure the Valkyries choose the player that New York or Minnesota wants them to, or you could potentially pick a player, a veteran, trade them to another team for a draft pick. And then the third possibility is if a team wants to clear cap space, like, let’s say Indiana has designs on going out into free agency and adding around Caitlin Clark, they could offer Golden State a pick to take Katie Lou Samuelson, who kind of fell out of the starting lineup last season and get her salary off the books that they’d then have more cap space this winter.
So let’s weigh some of these options here. Like what is the value of a pick from a team like the Liberty or Aces, is going to be late in the Draft, versus an unprotected player who may be the seventh, eighth best player on the team coming off the bench?
Yeah. I think that’s an interesting question because number one, I do think the WNBA Draft is going to become more important. Part of the reason it’s been tough for even late- first- round picks to make rosters is because as we talked about at the top, there’s been so few spots available around the league and so much talent. And now that you add one new team this year, two more in 2026, all of a sudden, it’s going to be much easier for some of those rookies to make rosters and even contribute right away. The other wrinkle here with New York, in particular, is even though their own pick is almost certainly going to always be at the end of the round for the 2025 upcoming Draft, they were able to swap with the Phoenix Mercury from a trade several years ago. So they’ve got the seventh pick in this year’s draft. And if I’m Golden State, I’m targeting that from the Liberty.
So what’s the actual, like, a vibe check here on players, right? What does it mean for a player to go from a team like, say, maybe a Liberty or Aces and end up on an expansion team? Like, I remember growing up, BJ Armstrong was part of that Bulls dynasty and then gets moved to an expansion team in the mid- 90s. What does that do for a player when these drafts happen?
Yeah. So my NBA example would be Tony Campbell, who was in the Expansion Draft when he was with the Showtime Lakers. And he wasn’t playing very much for them, obviously was part of some great teams, but then he goes to Minnesota and gets a chance to play, to play a lot. I think maybe averaged 20 points per game the first season for the Timberwolves. And I think a lot of players are going to look at it as that sort of opportunity. Like, yeah, maybe the team isn’t as good, but if it’s say Alissa Pili from Minnesota, who was their first- round pick, didn’t play a lot last year, it’s gonna be hard for her to crack that Lynx rotation, but you go to an expansion team, everybody’s starting from scratch.
So let us dream here a little bit. So is there a bigger name that we can sort of “fantasy place” here in Golden State? Could they convince like a Diana Taurasi or Elena Delle Donne to play one more year and come for them? Like, what is the sort of peak move that you could see them making?
Taurasi is an interesting one because there’s been a lot of speculation that maybe Phoenix won’t include her on their protected list because she still hasn’t announced whether she’s going to come back and play in 2025 or not. I still think you probably don’t need to because if she does get picked by the Valkyries, she’s probably not going to play for an expansion team. She’s probably just going to retire. Delle Donne, though there was a lot of reporting last offseason that she did want to play, she ended up taking the season off because Washington wasn’t able to find a trade for her. The Mystics have a lot of players to potentially protect in this Expansion Draft, some talented young players, some quality veterans. Even as a team that was in the lottery last year, I could see Delle Donne being out there in Golden State, maybe being able to convince her to run it back and be their star next season.
Alright, Kevin, I’m putting you on the spot, who is going to be the first member of the Golden State Valkyries?
All right, I’m going to go ahead and predict it. I mentioned it earlier, Elena Delle Donne. I’m going to say that Washington maybe doesn’t have enough room to protect her. She might retire if she just stays there. So they leave her out there and Golden State goes ahead and takes her and tries to convince her to play. That would be absolutely incredible.
That’s how you make a mark as an expansion team in the WNBA.
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