All the Valkyrie player exit interviews; plus GSV give Burton and Thornton Time-Off Bonuses to not play outside WNBA

Coach Nakase and GM Nyanin interviews coming early next week

Table of Contents

• Time Off Bonuses for Veronica and Kayla

• All The Exit Interviews

• Apricot’s Highly Organized Notes

Time Off Bonuses for Veronica and Kayla

From the WNBA Transactions page:

• Sep 11

  • Veronica Burton signed a Contract Amendment - Time-Off Bonus with the Golden State Valkyries.

  • Kayla Thornton signed a Contract Amendment - Time-Off Bonus with the Golden State Valkyries.

From the WNBA CBA FAQ:

Time off bonuses are payments made to players to encourage them to refrain from or limit the time spent performing basketball activities with other organizations in the WNBA offseason….

The time off bonus clause in the contract will specify that a player is permitted to play a given number of days professionally outside of the WNBA during the offseason. The requirement can range from a limit of 90 days allowed down to zero days (no professional play during the WNBA offseason)… Time off bonuses are included in a team's total salary unless they have been canceled, and therefore also have to fit under the salary cap.

Valhalla.Basketball has more detail:

The WNBA has tried several different incentives to keep their players from playing for the entire offseason in an effort to keep them healthy and well-rested for the next season. Teams can give out $50,000 in bonuses to players who will play elsewhere for fewer than 90 days. The Valkyries opted to split theirs between two players, giving $30,000 to Veronica Burton and $20,000 to Kayla Thornton as reported by Richard Cohen of Her Hoop Stats. Many players are not interested in these bonuses due to their existing overseas plans that would allow them to earn more money overall. The bonuses brought the Valkyries above the salary floor, so no additional money will be distributed to other players.

These numbers are slightly different from the Richard Cohen posts. I’m not sure who’s right. But it makes more sense to split the entire $50K, so it’s either $25k-$25k or maybe $30k-$20k.

All The Exit Interviews

• 00:06 Kate Martin and Cecilia Zandalasini

• 11:25 Kaitlyn Chen and Monique Billings

• 19:42 Veronica Burton

• 27:10 Janelle Salaün and Tiffany Hayes

• 37:30 Iliana Rupert and Carla Leite

• 48:07 Kaila Charles and Laeticia Amihere

• 58:06 Temi Fagbenle

Apricot’s Highly Organized Notes

• It was really a wall-to-wall love fest. The consistent theme across all interviews was the feeling of gratitude that they got to be a part of this very special season and appreciation for the enthusiasm from Ballhalla.

• Even Laeticia Amihere, who might have been expected to have wanted a bigger role since she got a very few minutes down the stretch, talked about how grateful she was to finally get a chance to play on GSV because she hadn’t gotten a chance on her previous teams. Thanks for covering us.

• I got the sense that the vets from other teams (Veronica, Monique and especially Tiffany) had extra appreciation for Ballhalla since they’d lived through much less enthusiastic crowds and communities.

• But I found it a little bit peculiar that Temi claimed she was not asking Ballhalla to boo visiting players. I don't really know how else a crowd would make the visiting players “feel uncomfortable”. Maybe the silent treatment? Passive aggression? I I also note that Cheryl Reeve, coach of the Minnesota Lynx, also complained about the booing. Booing is so standard in NBA introductions that I find these complaints confusing. I mean, when the Warriors do the visiting introductions, they turn the lights blood red and play the bad guys Imperial March from Star Wars.

• One thing I found annoying was the players’ vagueness about the team(s) they will play for in the off-season. I guess the questions were technically a little vague, like "What are your off-season plans?" But I was hoping they would say things like, "I'm going to play for Team X in the Italian League." I asked Warriors PR To compile an official list of off-season professional play for each of this season's Valkyries. There is a slightly subtle challenge in that most of the players are actually not under contract anymore to the Valkyries, and we don't know which ones will be coming back. Nonetheless, I believe Ballhalla will want to follow the exploits of all of the players from this season.

• Players were also very vague about what aspects of their game they wanted to work on. A player with a multi-year contract will get direction from the team on Things to work on in the offseason. But as I said above, literally every player except for Kate Martin and Carla Leite are not under contract (yet) to the Valkyries. You can see everybody's contract status here.

• Kayla Thornton didn’t have an exit interview. I saw her before Game 2 walking around quite slowly on crutches in so her lack of mobility and need for physical therapy could have been a big factor in this. Even getting from San Jose late Wednesday to the Oakland practice facility on Thursday at 2 p.m. might be non-trivial for her.

• Interesting moment with Tip giving Janelle a bit of a hard time for being in a shell early and coming out of it over time. But also Tip saying that it reminded her of herself in the past.

• After all of the extra stress Carla had to go through learning English on the fly this year, a lowkey wild moment with Carla talking about how she's going to go play in Spain, but she doesn't speak Spanish.

• We were told that there will be press availability with Coach Nakase (that’s nah-KAH-say for Commissioner Englebert) and GM Nyanin on Monday or Tuesday. I have a couple of questions for Nakase and I can imagine her having some interesting and thoughtful reflections on the season.

• I'm not as sure about what Ohemaa will say. We don't know any confirmed details about how the expansion draft will go or how the college/overseas draft is going to go or whether a new CBA will be signed or whether there will be a next season at all. Or clarity on many details for next season, like how many players are there per roster or whether there are going to be changes to the reserves and restricted free agency rules. Basically, almost nothing can be said about next season.