Years of intrigue have brought us to this moment and on Friday evening, WNBA expansion will finally move from concept to reality once again with the Golden State Valkyries’ expansion draft. It’s a moment that everyone, from fans to commissioner Cathy Engelbert, has long been waiting for.
Well, just about everyone.
“From a competitive spirit, none of us as GMs are looking forward to it,” Atlanta Dream general manager Dan Padover said. “But as visionaries for the league and watching the growth of the league, we understand that it’s a really good thing.”
Padover is one of dozens of executives across the league that have spent the past few months navigating the less glamorous side of the expansion draft process.
The other franchises knew this day would be coming ever since the league officially announced the Valkyries — the first expansion team since the Dream joined in 2008 — back on Oct. 5, 2023. They did not know when or exactly how it would work, however, until the league revealed the specifics in September.
There are plenty of details that Padover and Co. have had to comb through, but the short of it is this: on Friday, the Valkyries can select up to 12 players, but no more than one from each of the other 12 teams. The current teams, meanwhile, were able to protect six players, including those on the current roster and those whose draft rights they hold, making them off limits. Those protected lists, which were due to the league by Nov. 25, will not be made public.
But how do teams prepare for such a rare, and potentially franchise-altering event?
For newer executives like Padover and Connecticut Sun GM Darius Taylor it meant “picking the brains” of current and former GMs and studying past expansion drafts to ensure they had a grasp on what lay before them. For Kelly Krauskopf, who was the Indiana Fever’s original president and general manager from 2000-18, and recently returned as their new president of business and basketball operations, the whole ordeal is “nothing new.”
“There’s not any nervousness,” Kruaskopf said. “You’re just preparing because you know you’re gonna lose a player off your roster, so you’re looking at every aspect of what we can do if we lose somebody to shore up that spot.”
Front offices do a full evaluation of their roster, salary cap sheet and current and future outlook every offseason. Nothing brings that undertaking into focus quite like an expansion draft, which forces them to decide which six players are most valuable to the franchise. By definition, that is a ruthless exercise, and one that demands teams be “open and honest” with their players, Taylor said. At the same time, it requires a delicate touch because most teams have more than six players that they’d like to keep. “We’ve had those conversations,” Taylor continued, “And just explain to them, ‘Hey, we want you on the roster, some of those things are out of our control, we’ll try to negotiate with Golden State to keep you.’ And so that’s where the magic happens.”
The Valkyries’ ability to make trades adds another layer of intrigue. While they don’t have any current players to offer, they can move their future draft picks. In addition, they can agree to select a certain player from one team in order to trade them to another team. Conversely, they can agree not to select a specific player in exchange for compensation from their current team, which is the exact type of deal Krauskopf pulled off back in 2008, when she gave the Dream a second-round pick to make sure an unprotected player remained on the Fever. “Expansion drafts aren’t always great for those of us who are trying to acquire a deep bench,” Krauskopf said. “On the flip side, it’s an opportunity if you’re creative.”
Negotiating with a team that doesn’t have any players on the roster is a unique experience, but Valkyries GM Ohemaa Nyanin, who was previously the assistant GM for the New York Liberty, is highly regarded around the league. “Nobody’s gonna get anything over on her and her group,” Krauskopf said. Even if rival teams don’t come to an agreement on a trade with the Valkyries, their discussions with the new franchise can provide insight into what type of players they’re looking for, and in turn, which ones are most likely to be protected by other teams. “There’s gonna be a lot of bargaining going on,” Taylor said.
The primary focus for each team in creating their protected lists was their own internal needs and goals. At the same time, there was some game theory involved when considering both the fine print on the expansion draft rules and big picture items on the league’s upcoming agenda.
Perhaps most notably, the Valkyries are only allowed to select one player in the entire draft who will be an unrestricted free agent this winter. “When you’re a team with a lot of unrestricted free agents, it’s a little easier than teams that have seven, eight, nine players under contract,” Taylor said. “I’d hate to be them right now.” (The Sun only have three players under contract for the 2025 season.) If a team was willing to take a risk, and had a tough decision to make between a player under contract and one who will be an unrestricted free agent, the latter’s status could end up keeping them safe.
There’s also the fact that the Valkyries don’t have to operate under the salary cap for the purposes of the draft, according to a league source. That means there was no benefit to leaving higher-paid players unprotected with an eye on the Valkyries’ cap space running out.
Speaking of contracts, the vast majority of players are set to be unrestricted free agents in 2026 in order to line up with the new television deal and collective bargaining agreement. The latter still needs to be negotiated, but it is widely expected that it will bring bigger salaries. That makes young players on current rookie contracts, which could be a massive bargain under the new CBA, more valuable to both their current teams and the Valkyries.
There will also be another expansion draft next year when the yet unnamed Toronto and Portland franchises join the league for the 2026 season. Padover said it was a “tough call” to say exactly how much that event will influence decisions for this draft, but acknowledged that it “plays a big part” in long-term roster evaluation.
For all the hard work that league’s decision makers have put into this process to try and generate the best outcome for their team, “Golden State is obviously driving the bus on this,” Taylor said. “You’re essentially losing a player you’ve signed or drafted for nothing.”
None of the general managers will be thrilled about that, but come Friday night they’ll be just as interested as the rest of us to see what the Valkyries do.
“The strategy when you’re starting off new, you have to think about what’s your biggest priority,” Krauskopf said. “Is it point guard, center, everybody thinks differently. Or is it just best player? I’m not in their shoes, but I know they have smart people running their organization.”
