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When asked whether\u00a0trading out of the first round was potentially due to salary cap implications, Nyanin said, \u201cI don\u2019t talk or comment about salary cap.\u201d According to Spotrac, there is almost a $40,000 difference for the upcoming 2026 season and a $151,302 difference in total value for the rookie-scale contracts designated to the No. 8 and No. 16 picks. Additionally, first-round contracts guarantee rookie salary under the league\u2019s new Collective Bargaining Agreement; second-round contracts do not.<\/p>\n
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On a subsequent question regarding what factored into moving off of Johnson, Nyanin added that she does not typically talk publicly about team strategy to avoid giving away a competitive advantage to opposing teams: \u201cThat question has been asked and answered, and I would just say that when I\u2019m ready to kind of speak more about what the strategy is behind it, I\u2019ll speak on it. I\u2019ll also say I don\u2019t really speak about my strategy, ever, publicly because all other teams are watching to see what our strategy is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nyanin\u00a0clarified to ESPN, \u201cI want to be super clear about the draft: This had nothing to do with Flau\u2019jae or any specific athlete selection.\u201d<\/p>\n
Su\u00e1rez, a 6-foot-3 forward, fell out of the first round before the Storm took her with the first pick (No. 16 overall) in the second round. She averaged 17.1 points, 7.4 rebounds and 1.4 steals per game at TCU last season, shooting 37% from 3-point range. A native of Spain, she played her previous two seasons at\u00a0Cal, where she was also a double-figure scorer.<\/p>\n
Her breakthrough campaign with the Horned Frogs, who made it to the Elite Eight this past season, included a unanimous first-team All-Big 12 nod.<\/p>\n
\u201cMarta is fierce, she\u2019s fearless,\u201d Nyanin said. \u201cWe have looked at her for a really long time. What I would say is her potential is really high, and as we were looking at our depth chart, looking at who we wanted to (bring) to (training) camp, we really wanted a competitive camp.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIn terms of her position and what we want to see in camp and how competitive we want to be, we felt like she would be a great fit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nyanin chose not to address whether her staff considered taking\u00a0Su\u00e1rez outright with the No. 8 pick.<\/p>\n
Johnson averaged 14.6 points per game in her accomplished four-year college career. She won a national championship as a freshman and was named an Associated Press third-team All-American in each of her last two seasons. A two-way threat, Johnson also averaged 1.6 steals at LSU, where she made 139 starts in 141 games played. The 5-foot-10 combo guard led the Tigers to four NCAA Tournaments, with two appearances in the Elite Eight and another in the Final Four.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t think that she\u2019d be available at that point,\u201d Storm general manager Talisa Rhea said of trading for Johnson in exchange for their No. 16 pick and another asset.<\/p>\n
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The Valkyries picked up Duke\u2019s Ashlon Jackson with the 23rd overall pick. The 6-foot guard averaged 11.2 points and 1.4 steals per game last season. Jackson led the Blue Devils to back-to-back Elite Eight appearances. Her buzzer-beater to upset\u00a0LSU, and Johnson, in this year\u2019s Sweet 16 served as one of the biggest March Madness highlights this spring.<\/p>\n
Japanese shooting guard Kokoro Tanaka ended the Valkyries\u2019 eventful draft day at No. 38 overall in the third round. The 5-8\u00a0Tanaka averaged 5.7 points, shooting 32.7% overall and 27.5% from the 3-point line, and 20.9 minutes in 28 games this past season for the\u00a0Eneos Sunflowers in the Women\u2019s Japan Basketball League.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TCU forward Marta Su\u00e1rez,\u00a0acquired by the Valkyries on Monday during the WNBA draft, played two seasons at Cal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":268240,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[107622,18739,104121,101,103,102,104,106,105,8859],"class_list":["post-268239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-flaujae-johnson","tag-golden-state-valkyries","tag-marta-suarez","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-womens-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268239\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}