It’s a new dawn in San Francisco.
The Golden State Valkyries will play their first game in franchise history in a preseason contest against the Los Angeles Sparks at Chase Center on May 6, marking the official start of the 13th WNBA team. Coming on the heels of a Golden State Warriors win in game seven in the NBA playoffs, the game is sure to have Chase Center rocking—in purple, for the first time.
While the outcome won’t matter to the team, it’s all about finalizing the roster for the Valkyries and getting a taste of what head coach Natalie Nakase wants from the squad.
The team has until the first day of the regular season—May 16—to cut down the roster from its current 18 players to the permitted 12. That’s never easy in a league with more talent than roster spots, and WNBA cuts are famously brutal. Golden State has already waived Shyanne Sellers, the team’s second-round pick (No. 17 overall) in the 2025 draft.
With the roster in mind, let’s see how it breaks down for the squad before tip-off against the Sparks.
I’m going to use Her Hoop Stats, an invaluable WBB resource, for cap matters (see GSV’s team cap sheet here).
The Veterans (5)
The Valkyries have five players I’m going to put in this designation: Tiffany Hayes, who leads the team with 12 years of experience, Kayla Thornton (9), Monique Billings (7), Steph Talbot (6), and Temi Fagbenle, who only has four WNBA seasons but is 32 with plenty of overseasons experience. The five also composes five of GSV’s top six salaries. Thornton, Billings, and Talbot are protected veterans, so they’re not going anywhere anytime soon.
Hayes, a 5’10 guard, was the league’s Sixth Player of the Year in 2024; it’ll be interesting to see if she returns to a starting role (she started all 40 games for Connecticut in 2023 before starting 5 of Atlanta’s 33 in 2024).
Thornton was a key reserve on the 2024 champion New York Liberty (with assistant GM-turned GSV-GM Ohemaa Nyanin). One thing to watch for her is her three-point rate (three-point field goals as a percentage of a player’s total shot attempts): last season’s 62.7% and its corresponding 35.7% accuracy were career highs.
Billings split time between Dallas and Phoenix last season after spending the first six years of her career in Atlanta. For one of the tallest players on the roster I’d expect the Valkyries to be attuned to Billings’ offensive rebound rate, which dropped to 9.1% in each of the last two seasons after never falling below 11% in her first five seasons.
Talbot averaged 16 minutes per game with Las Vegas last season after returning from an ACL injury that cost her the entire 2023 season. The Valks are surely betting that Talbot’s three-point percentage returns closer to her career 36% line than the 26% she shot with the Aces.
Last but not least in this category is Fagbenle, who played for the London Lions when Valks’ Director of Basketball Operations Vanja Černivec was the GM. With the Indiana Fever last season, Fagbenle was a rotational reserve and a popular teammate who, at 6’4 along with Billings, can add some frontcourt depth. She was Kevin Pelton’s favorite expansion draft pick for GSV, highlighting her near double-double to end the season in 2024 and wealth of experience.
The Rookies (6 + 1)
The rookies on the training camp roster range in age from Migna Touré (30) to Carla Leite (21). Justė Jocytė, the No. 5 overall pick in 2025 at 19 years old, is not listed on the roster and will not join the team at the start of the season.
Touré and Leite are part of a French-heavy Valkyries contingent (also on the team roster are Iliana Rupert and Janelle Salaün, who, along with Elissa Cunane, will report to camp after the conclusion of international commitments). It’s an overall international-focused roster for the Valks; 6’4 center Kyara Linskens, a rookie only to the WNBA, joins fellow Belgium national and expansion draft pick Julie Vanloo on the camp roster.
One rookie drawing a lot of buzz is Leite, taken from Dallas in the expansion draft, who was the EuroCup Finals MVP. Leite was the Wings’ No. 9 overall pick in 2024 but remained overseas last season, making her essentially a free first-round pick for the Valks. The soon-to-be French senior international averaged 16.2 points and 5 assists per game for Villeneuve during domestic play in 2024-25.
Chloe Bibby, an Australian who played for the universities of Mississippi and Maryland, averaged 17.8 points per game on 45.4% shooting from deep for Girona in domestic play in 2024-25. Those are the type of shooting numbers—on 163 three-point attempts, no less—that get you an invite to camp. Bibby was an undrafted free agent in 2022 who attended training camp with the Minnesota Lynx.
Kaitlyn Chen, from national champion UConn, is the rare Valks rookie from the United States (it was Chen and Sellers, who has since been claimed off waivers by the Atlanta Dream). The 30th overall pick and Bay Area native started her career at Princeton before joining Paige Bueckers and the Huskies for her senior year.
The Sort-of-Veterans (6)
It’s a youth movement in the Bay, as the roster (as currently listed on the team website) has an average 2.7 years of WNBA experience. Of course, as discussed above, it’s not really a youth movement, considering the experience outside of the league for much of the roster, but it does point to the Valkyries being willing to consult a wide range of options as they try to win a title within their first 5-10 seasons (I know this to be the case firsthand).
One thing the Valkyries are looking at is three-point rate. Vanloo started 34 games for the Mystics in 2024 after spending the first decade of her career overseas. and put up 9.6 threes per 40 minutes in Washington, making them at a 32.1% clip. Veronica Burton, a three-time conference DPOY at Northwestern, had a three-point rate of 51% in Connecticut and upped her efficiency with a 35.1% make rate after two seasons below 30%. Cecilia Zandalasini, back to the Lynx in 2024 after six years abroad, hit 44.3% of her threes and shot them at nearly the same rate. Two of every three shots were three-pointers for Kate Martin, the lone Vegas player on a rookie deal last year after being a third-round pick, and she shot 35.5% from beyond the arc.
Only Laeticia Amihere and Elissa Cunane appear in this intermediate category with minimal three-point shooting experience. Amihere struggled in 2024 after a strong rookie year in Atlanta and has just one career three to her name. Cunane had a successful career at NC State and most recently played in the Czech Republic. She played in three games for the Minnesota Lynx in 2022.
Josiah Cohen 
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