The Expansion Draft Waiting Game

Posted On November 25, 2024November 25, 2024

Now that the lottery for the next WNBA Entry Draft has been conducted, the next major event is one that Golden State Valkyrie fans have been waiting for since the team was announced as the Expansion Draft will give the team its first players. There are still likely to be coaching announcements from other teams between now and then, but the other twelve teams also have to focus on finalizing the protection list that they will be sending to the league to exempt six players from being selectable as Golden State will get to select one player who is left unprotected from each team. The Valkyries will then know which players are available and will get to contemplate trades before the picks are made and the results are set to be announced on ESPN on December 6th at 3:30pm PT.

The Trade Window

After the lists are submitted and before the final selections and announcement are made, the Valkyries will be able to arrange trades with other teams. There are two different kinds of trades that the team can agree to during this period. They can negotiate directly with a team to secure an additional asset that affects their selection from that team. That means that another team would be able to send something to the Valkyries for them to pick a specific unprotected player, likely a player that the team does not want to retain. Since many teams would love to be able to protect more than six players, they can also trade an asset in exchange for the Valkyries agreeing not to pick one or more players who are left unprotected.

The Valkyries can also negotiate with other teams on a trade where Golden State selects a certain unprotected player from a different team and then immediately trades that player to the team in question. Since the Valkyries still have free agency and the entry draft to acquire players before the season, they are not going to want to end this process with twelve players under contract, leaving them open to this type of trade. There might also be players at the same position who are the most valuable selections from their respective teams so the Valkyries could keep one player and trade one player to maximize the overall value that they get from the process. Future draft picks or rights to players who might not be playing in the league in 2025 could be attractive trade targets to Golden State.

The Protection Lists

Fans of the Valkyries and of other teams were looking forward to the release of the lists sometime before the event, but widespread reporting has confirmed that the league intends to keep all lists a secret, although individual players are supposed to be informed of their status. There has been concern over the years on the impact of public opinion if the lists are publicly available. Negative attention towards individual players has certainly been an issue this season, it makes more sense to release the entire list than to create the possibility of targeted leaks from team sources to the media that only hurt some players. While it seems likely that some or all of the relevant information will leak out, that could mean a lot of secrecy in the days leading up to the event while trades are considered and then final decisions are made. There has been plenty of criticism of the plan for protection lists to be secret that was carried over from the last expansion draft.

It’s Not 2008 Anymore

The last time that an expansion draft was conducted was in February of 2008 ahead of the debut season for the Atlanta Dream. The league was in a different place at that time and while interested fans would have preferred that those protections lists were public, it was understandable that no big deal was made of the event. The league’s growth since then and the anticipation of many expansions to come instead of trying to avoid contraction mean that there is more attention on this event and more consideration should have been given to the benefits of releasing the lists publicly. The league’s place in the sports world is not the only thing that has changed since 2008 as technology has changed the ways that fans like to interact with the league.

At the time of the last expansion draft, sports media options were completely different with print and broadcast media and their websites were the major sources of news. The current social media options were nowhere near as widespread and fans generally had to seek out message boards and other places to discuss teams and the league beyond their personal acquaintances. Media members with inside connections to leagues and teams certainly existed, but the instantaneous reporting and reactions that are available now were not the main goal of media companies yet at that point. Bloggers and smaller, targeted internet media existed, but were still building towards what is available now between websites, centralized blog sites, social media, and both audio and visual mediums. With so many options to build excitement without relying on broadcasts or print journalism, it seems shortsighted not to provide information that could lead to discussion and then anticipation of the event itself.

Conclusion

While Golden State Valkyries fans can look forward to finding out who the first players on their roster will be after the expansion draft takes place, they are not currently set to get much insight into the process before that announcement. That means that fans who are very interested in finding out the options that the teams faced and ultimately evaluating whether the Valkyries did a good job or not with their selections and trades may not be able to make much of an assessment. The fans of other teams would also want to know how their front offices value the various assets held by the team and get some insight on their short-term goals while also finding out about trade options. While the league just releasing the lists publicly would be greatly welcomed, fans are likely to have to wait for players or teams to leak information to the media to get early tidbits before the final reveal.