The Golden State Valkyries will be selecting Kate Martin and Kayla Thornton in the 2025 WNBA expansion draft, a source briefed on the decision told The Athletic. The full results of the draft will be announced Friday at 6:30 p.m. ET on ESPN.
Per the rules outlined by the league and the collective bargaining agreement for the expansion draft, the 12 current WNBA franchises are allowed to protect six players. The Valkyries are then able to choose one unprotected player from each team; that can be a player on the active roster, a player who the organization has draft rights to, or is on their international rights list.
Martin will arguably be the most popular player taken by Golden State Friday. The 2024 rookie out of Iowa, where she helped Caitlin Clark lead the Hawkeyes to two consecutive trips to the national title game, had a strong start to her first WNBA season. As the Las Vegas Aces dealt with the absence of Chelsea Gray, Martin averaged 19.3 minutes over her first ten games and made 37 percent of her 3-pointers.
However, Martin saw less court time as the Aces returned to full health, cracking double-digit minutes only twice in the second half of the season. Her postseason minutes consisted of one appearance in a blowout. Las Vegas was always going to protect its core four of A’ja Wilson, Kelsey Plum, Jackie Young, and Gray in the draft, but Martin could have been one of the final two players. Instead, Martin will start the second chapter of her WNBA career with the Valkyries, and the expansion team will benefit from the three remaining cost-controlled seasons on her rookie deal.
The New York Liberty had to make some of the toughest decisions league-wide thanks to the depth of their roster. The reigning champions had to prioritize their full starting lineup and Nyara Sabally, who was the X-factor in Game 5 of the WNBA Finals. That left their entire international list — including Marine Johannès and Han Xu — exposed, as well as critical bench players.
Golden State is electing to take one of those veteran reserves in Kayla Thornton, a player who general manager Ohemaa Nyanin is intimately familiar with, as Nyanin was the assistant GM in New York prior to joining the Valkyries.
Thornton appeared in every playoff game for the Liberty during their title run, averaging the second-most minutes (12.5) among bench players. Her best peformance of the postseason came in Game 2 of the semifinals against Las Vegas, when she was a game-best plus-13 and helped New York take a commanding 2-0 lead in the series. Golden State will be the fourth stop in Thornton’s WNBA career, and the 32-year-old veteran has one year remaining on a contract extension she signed with the Liberty in 2023.
Required reading
(Photo: Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
