WNBA Finally Lays Out Expansion Draft Rules for Valkyries

The Golden State Valkyries are one step closer to putting a roster together. 

The WNBA’s 13th team, which will begin play next season, will participate in the league’s first expansion draft in 16 years on Dec. 6, the league announced. 

Teams will have the ability to protect six players on their rosters, who will be unavailable for the Valkyries to select. The lists will include every player a team holds the rights to at the conclusion of the 2024 season, which according to ESPN, will come with an expected deadline of Dec. 16, or 10 days after the expansion draft. If the Valkyries use a selection on a free-agent player, they will be getting whatever rights that player’s past team had. The Valkyries will have the ability to select one unrestricted free agent who has not been cored by their team for two-plus seasons. 

The core rule allows WNBA teams to designate a player as an integral part of the team essentially revoking their unrestricted-free-agent status and allowing the team to exclusively negotiate a new contract with that player. Golden State can core that unrestricted free agent in January, when free agency starts. 

Golden State can pick one player from each team and won’t have to worry about the league’s salary-cap rules while doing so. But the team’s roster will have to be compliant with the salary cap by February, when players become eligible to sign contracts. 

Since being announced as the WNBA’s first expansion team since 2008, the Valkyries have drawn significant interest despite having no team or games, yet. Warriors co-owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber own the Valkyries and have brought multiple Warriors employees over to help jump-start the expansion franchise. As of September, the organization has received 17,000 deposits for season tickets and has regularly sold out of merchandise. 

“Our fans were buying merch before they were placing deposits,” Kim Veale, a Valkyries marketing and communications executive, told Front Office Sports in September. “We can’t keep product on the shelves right now.”

While December’s expansion draft seems straightforward, it brings into question what the 2025 WNBA draft will look like for the organization as well as next year’s expansion draft with Toronto and Portland set to start play in 2026. WNBA players are expected to opt out of their current collective bargaining agreement by Nov. 1, which would have it expire at the end of next season. Additionally, the league’s new media-rights deal, which is set to start next season, will increase player salaries. 

The Atlanta Dream were the league’s last expansion team in 2008 and had the eighth overall pick in the draft, which was the first outside the lottery. But that was without several expansion teams looming. The Valkyries are still awaiting where they will pick in April’s draft.  

“We don’t know where that’s going to land,” Valkyries president Jess Smith told FOS in September. “It will be interesting. I do think the league is in a position where they have to get this right because Toronto comes in ’26, and one or two more teams are coming immediately thereafter in ’27 and ’28 so there’s precedent, too. And so, whatever is decided as a league, the point is that expansion heightens the talent pool. Obviously there’s been a lot of talk about how much talent is available with this league so everyone can be competitive.”