Published Aug. 5, 2026at6:00am
Midway through the third quarter, with the Valkyries clinging to a one-point lead, Kayla Thornton delivered a momentum-shifting two-way sequence.
Thornton outran all five Tempo defenders in transition, then cut backdoor just as Veronica Burton threaded a pass underneath the rim to set up an uncontested layup. On the next possession, Thornton planted herself in the paint and drew an offensive foul on Aneesah Morrow, taking an elbow to the chin and forcing a Tempo turnover.
Before Thornton’s dominant third-quarter effort on Tuesday at Chase Center, the Valkyries and the Tempo were locked in a back-and-forth affair. After her layup and defensive stop, Golden State never trailed.
The Valkyries secured a 92-81 win, holding the Tempo to a 13-point final quarter while securing a season sweep.
For Thornton, the outing was her first 20-point game since June 2025. Her efficiency — she went 6-of-10 from the floor and 4-of-7 from 3-point range — coupled with Janelle Salaun’s 21-point effort off the bench keyed the win.
“Her approach today was at a high level, and then once she sees that first one go in, it is trouble,” Valkyries coach Natalie Nakase said. “I actually really loved her defense. I thought she came in with a sense of physicality that no one was going to get in there unless they were going to go through her, and so just her start on the defensive end to me was really impressive.”
Last season, Thornton scored in double figures in 14 consecutive games. She played 30 minutes per game, and was the Valkyries’ highest-volume shot-taker, averaging 12.5 field goal attempts. On Tuesday, that version of Thornton returned to Chase Center.
Before the Valkyries had such a well-defined identity, they just had Thornton.
She joined the expansion franchise after a decade in the league. She was a role player on a championship New York Liberty team in 2024, and with Golden State, she needed to be so much more.
The 6-foot-1 forward emerged as a face of the team, earning the first WNBA All-Star selection of her career while averaging 14.0 points and 7.0 rebounds per game. Then came the injury. Thornton underwent right knee surgery on July 25, 2025, halting what had been the best season of her career at the halfway point.
This season, after re-signing with the Valkyries on a one-year, $600,000 contract in free agency, Thornton is hoping to do something she couldn’t a year ago: see the season through.
Her role has evolved, and not in the way most players dream about.
The offense doesn’t revolve around her the way it often did in the Valkyries’ earliest games, and on most nights, her stat line doesn’t warrant a second glance. But Nakase’s system is nonetheless reliant on Thornton, still a full-time starter, for all the things that keep the engine humming.
“I would say this is the biggest thing with KT: she’s not afraid of physicality because we’ve had to play her in so many positions defensively,” Nakase said. “Guard the three. Guard the four, no, actually, KT, guard the five this time. She doesn’t care, it’s ‘Whatever you need, coach.’”
She’s the player crashing the defensive glass to ignite the fast break or the first one sprinting up the floor in transition. In the Valkyries’ small-ball lineups, she’s often tasked with battling bigger forwards and even elite centers, accepting daunting physical assignments that allow everyone else around her to play faster.
Have thoughts on this story?Start the conversation
“It’s been great for our style of play,” Thornton said. “People keep telling us we’re small, but we just play hard. Sometimes, you really can’t even tell.”
Playing with an undersized unit means every rebound is contested, and Thornton has embraced the responsibility of winning extra possessions. Even if much of her work wouldn’t appear in a highlight package, her teammates notice.
“KT is just one hell of a hustler,” Gabby Williams said. “You just feed off that when you see someone going that hard, crashing, creating extra possessions.”
That same relentlessness carried her through one of the hardest stretches of her career.
Thornton is averaging fewer than 25 minutes per game this season, but is still a key member of Golden State’s starting lineup. | Source: Christian Petersen/Getty Images
It took until four months post-surgery when she started running up and down the court, a milestone she describes as one of the biggest breakthroughs. It wasn’t until February that she eased into full-contact drills. She remembers the first time she started playing 3-on-3 basketball again and realizing just how much conditioning she’d lost.
“I’d never been out of shape in my life for 10 years,” she recalled.
As the Valkyries began racking up wins early in the season, Thornton said she was able to view the injury differently than she did in its immediate aftermath.
“It was devastating for me,” Thornton said following a practice. “But it was a blessing in disguise.”
For the first time in years, basketball slowed down enough for her to rebuild her game from the ground up. This past offseason wasn’t just about rehabbing her knee; Thornton also spent the time refining mechanics that had gone largely untouched throughout her 11-season career that has also included stops with the Mystics and Wings. She believes the process — those months and months of rehabbing essentially alone — made her a better player.
This season, Thornton’s scoring, rebounding, and assist averages are all down, but she’s shooting 36.2% from 3-point range — her highest mark since 2018 — and has the best plus-minus of her career (+4.9).
Even while sidelined, she stayed connected to the team through the most exciting stretch of its inaugural season — when the group didn’t fall apart in the face of injuries and absences, and made a postseason push.
“It made my heart feel warm,” Thornton said. “Whatever I left, they kind of just finished that.”
As the 21-9 Valkyries — now tied for second place in the WNBA — prepare for a second-half stretch that will pause for 17 days in September due to the FIBA Women’s World Cup in Berlin, Thornton is no longer watching from the sideline. She’s back in the lineup every night, even if her contributions look much different than they did last year.
That’s been a major evolution for the Valkyries: a shifting role, a new usage pattern, and fluctuating stat lines — Thornton took one shot in 11 minutes on Sunday before scoring a season-high 20 on Tuesday. But her importance hasn’t diminished.
She’s there to empty the tank against bigger matchups, clean the glass, and create the kind of hustle plays that set the tone for her team. As Golden State pushes toward a goal of earning a home-court advantage for a first-round playoff series, Thornton keeps the formula simple.
“It’s going to be a tight run. The second half of the season is very important,” she said. “But we’re just taking it one game at a time.”
A year ago, Thornton’s season ended before the most meaningful games began. This year, she’s chasing a chance to finish what’s started.