{"id":570690,"date":"2026-04-07T23:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T23:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/570690\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T23:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T23:32:08","slug":"valkyries-deliver-qualifying-offers-to-six-players-from-2025-playoff-team-the-mercury-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/570690\/","title":{"rendered":"Valkyries deliver qualifying offers to six players from 2025 playoff team \u2013 The Mercury News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mercurynews.com\/sports\/wnba\/golden-state-valkyries\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Valkyries<\/a> made official contract offers Tuesday to six players as they prepare for the opening of free agency later this week.<\/p>\n<p>Golden State delivered a restricted qualifying offer to Veronica Burton, making the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mercurynews.com\/2025\/09\/15\/valkyries-guard-veronica-burton-wins-wnba-most-improved-award\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">2025 WNBA Most Improved Player<\/a> a restricted free agent whose offer sheets \u2014 should she sign one with another WNBA team \u2014 the Valkyries can match.<\/p>\n<p>The Valkyries gave reserved qualifying offers to Laeticia Amihere, Kaitlyn Chen, Iliana Rupert, Janelle Sala\u00fcn and Cecilia Zandalasini, giving them exclusive negotiation rights with those players. Those reserved offers are one-year, league-minimum deals.<\/p>\n<p>Pending free agents who did not receive a formal offer of either kind or a \u201ccore player\u201d designation include Monique Billings, Temi Fagbenle, Tiffany Hayes and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mercurynews.com\/2025\/07\/18\/how-kayla-thornton-became-a-wnba-all-star-valkyries-best-player\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">All-Star Kayla Thornton<\/a>, who missed the second half of the 2025 season with a knee injury. They will all become unrestricted free agents, although they could return to Golden State on a new deal.<\/p>\n<p>Kate Martin is the only Valkyries player under contract for the 2026 season as a draftee from last spring, leaving Golden State with more than $6.7 million of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mercurynews.com\/2026\/03\/23\/valkyries-faqs-how-the-new-cba-will-impact-golden-state-in-year-2\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">new $7 million salary cap<\/a> to use in free agency. Carla Leite, also a 2025 rookie, went to the Portland Fire in last week\u2019s expansion draft, while Maria Conde went to the Toronto Tempo.<\/p>\n<p>Free agency negotiations open Wednesday, but signings cannot be formalized until Saturday. The WNBA\u2019s whirlwind offseason continues with the amateur draft next Monday, and the Valkyries have the No. 8 overall pick. They have not announced a training camp start date, but they will host the Seattle Storm in a preseason game April 25.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Valkyries made official contract offers Tuesday to six players as they prepare for the opening of free&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":570691,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[402,4804,10831,3803,2558,3804,99,434],"class_list":{"0":"post-570690","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-golden-state-valkyries","10":"tag-inside-sports","11":"tag-keywee","12":"tag-latest-headlines","13":"tag-pm-report","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=570690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/570691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}