Who is Iliana Rupert and who will be cut to make room for her?

the much-anticipated stretch center

Table of Contents

• Who is Iliana Rupert?

• Is she really coming to play the rest of the season?

• Who will be cut to make space for Rupert?

• Appendix. Into the weeds: it’s easy for GSV to waive any player

Who is Iliana Rupert?

We’ve heard the murmurs (or maybe you’ve just heard it from me). “Rupert is coming, Rupert is coming.” (That’s “Ru-PAIR” in French.) GSV expansion-drafted the rights to Iliana Rupert who starred as the starting center for the powerhouse France team. (FRA lost an absolute heartbreaker to Spain in the semifinals when Rupert missed the game-tying free throw at the buzzer.) Despite that, Rupert is very good and she plans to join GSV now that Eurobasket is over.

Check out this longer piece at Rose Garden Report with quotes from her brother Rayan Rupert (in the NBA with POR):

Iliana was a first-round pick of the Las Vegas Aces in 2021 and has played in the WNBA for two seasons, for the Aces in 2022 and for the Atlanta Dream in 2023.

When she was in ATL, she was actually teammates with Monique Billings and Laeticia Amihere!

She skipped the 2024 WNBA season, along with every other player on the French women’s national team, to focus on preparing for the Paris Olympics last summer.

…

The Ruperts are basketball royalty in France. Rayan and Iliana’s father, Thierry, played professionally in their home country for almost two decades, including for the national team. He died of a heart attack in 2013 at the age of 35, when Rayan was nine. Both siblings wore his number, 12, in France.

(I notice #12 is open on GSV.)

Growing up, Iliana was the prodigy, and that helped Rayan get noticed, too.

“My sister was pretty famous in the basketball world in France,” Rayan says. “She was very good at a very young age. So every time I went somewhere, people were like, ‘Oh, you’re the son of Thierry Rupert and the sister of Iliana. OK.’”

A 6-foot-4 center, Iliana has had a decorated career overseas but hasn’t had a huge role on either of her two WNBA teams….

It helps that [Iliana] already has a relationship with Golden State’s newly hired head coach, Natalie Nakase, who was an assistant with the Aces during the season she spent there.

Basketball-wise she’s a stretch 5, meaning on defense she guards the biggest player and fights for rebounds and on offense she can play inside to collapse the defense but also shoot 3 pointers to spread out the defense and allow easier driving lanes for other players.

Here are her stats from:

• International clubs

• Olympics

• WNBA stats

• Eurobasket 2025 (you’ll also see Salaun led FRA in efficiency and points)

It’s a bit hard to aggregate all the different team stats, but as a data point, in the recent Eurobasket tournament, Rupert shot 5/10 (50%) from three (and also was 3rd in Efficiency, which is FIBA’s funny way of adding all the good counting stats and subtracting the bad ones).

Is she really coming to play the rest of the season?

According to the great Marisa Ingemi (2025-07-06):

Center Iliana Rupert will join the Valkyries on July 15, her agent Omar Bendjador told the Chronicle.

And commenter Via found this video where at 14:47 Rupert talks about coming:

Interviewer: Donc voilà que toi tu tu vas y retourner après l'Euro et c'est ça on a vu l'info juste juste ce matin tomber tu vas tu vas aller donc au Valkyries de San Francisco.

which roughly translates to “So you're going to go back there after the Eurobasket and that's it, we saw the news just this morning that you're going to go to the Valkyries in San Francisco.” And Rupert agrees.

So that settles it.

Hat tip to my guy Kenzo Fukuda who pointed me to this article from Tom Compayrot of BeBasket which points out that Rupert delayed her arrival after Eurobasket in order to get married, congratulations Iliana!

Here is an auto-translation:

As for Iliana Rupert, her arrival at the Golden State Valkyries will take a little longer. Barely recovered from EuroBasket—and in particular from the heartbreak of her 3-pointer and her missed free throw at the buzzer in the semifinals against Spain—the eldest of the Rupert siblings is in France for personal obligations (her civil marriage). This will take her a few days. According to our information, she will arrive in San Francisco around July 15 to join her new franchise. These personal obligations are always difficult to fit into the ultra-busy schedules of high-level women's basketball players, between the domestic league, the EuroLeague, the French national team, and the WNBA...

The Golden State Valkyries will be embarking on a four-game cross-country road trip anyway. Rupert will join the team after that. But the Valkyries will have to cut a player before then to make room for him. "I don't know. We'll have to ask our front office," coach Natalia Nakase said of the need. The French international's arrival after EuroBasket has been arranged since the Expansion Draft last December.

With two WNBA seasons under her belt, and impressive EuroLeague campaigns in between, she's a proven player who can make a direct contribution. Her stretch center profile will be welcome for the Valkyries, who are the worst 3-point team in the league (28.7%). Rupert will be the third French player on the roster, along with Carla Leite and Janelle Salaün , who will also be returning to the team soon.

Who will be cut to make space for Rupert?

After the stunning waiver (and yes the very rude treatment) of Julie Vanloo, that leaves the maximum 12 players on the roster:

• Kayla Thornton

• Veronica Burton

• Janelle Salaün

• Temi Fagbenle

• Tiffany Hayes

• Cecilia Zandalasini

• Monique Billings

• Kaitlyn Chen

• Laeticia Amihere

• Kate Martin

• Stephanie Talbot

• Carla Leite

I ordered the list by descending Minutes Per Game. It would be a true shock if any of the top 7 were waived, so I consider the players on the bubble the following:

• Kaitlyn Chen

• Laeticia Amihere

• Kate Martin

• Stephanie Talbot

• Carla Leite

Now, the rest of this is going to be a cold-blooded basketball analysis. As a fan, I would love for all those players to stay with the team as the 13th player. But that’s not allowed.

The case for waiving Stephanie Talbot:

• GSV own the rights to Martin and Leite for the next two years. GSV would have the restricted free agency rights to Chen and Amihere for the next few years. Talbot will be an unrestricted free agent (and not that it matters in a cold business, but she is also guaranteed her full salary even if waived).

• Talbot also is last on the team in True Shooting %, has the lowest Total Rebounding % among bigs, and has the highest Turnover %.

• A lot of what she does as a stretch-wing overlaps with Thornton, Billings, and Zandalasini.

  • Amihere brings post scoring and dynamic athleticism that nobody else on the roster has.

  • Leite brings young potential and lightning first-step speed that no one outside of Hayes can bring.

  • Martin is a bruising small who can defend bigs in a pinch better than any other small besides Burton.

    • She can also keep the offense running and shoot threes at an average rate.

• Up until now I would have said Kaitlyn Chen was the most likely to be waived, as in theory she was behind Hayes, Burton, Vanloo, Leite and Martin as guards. But Chen’s received not just real minutes but also closing lineup minutes. It turns out that Nakase values a backup point guard who plays really hard, gets the ball where it’s supposed to go, and follows the game plan with no bonus chaos.

  • Also, Vanloo was waived, Leite has had a lingering injury, and Tip Hayes has missed time twice for a broken face and still manages to get smashed in the head multiple times a game. So there might be a need for guard depth and the waiver of Vanloo elevates Chen from almost-certain-cut to on-the-bubble with Talbot.

Logic tells me that Talbot would be the next player to be waived, but after the Vanloo waiver, it’s clear GSV is unpredictable. Let’s see what unfolds…

Appendix. Into the weeds: it’s easy for GSV to waive any player

The team hasn’t announced the exact type of contract of any of the players. The WNBA has listed every one as a “rest of season” contract, but we’ve noted that WNBA.com has been wrong before. Thus, no one knows if these are hardship or just normal rest-of-season contracts like WNBA.com says. I suspect they are rest-of-season contracts, because that gives max flexibility about what to pay the players.

Julia Velson wrote on 2025-06-25:

None of the GSV recently added players are hardship contracts. A hardship is granted by the league when a team has less than 10 available players AND no salary cap room. The hardship exemption is an exemption to the salary cap. These contracts end when the team has 10 or more of its non-hardship players available. Contracts (hardship or not) signed after the beginning of the season and before the midpointvare defined in the CBA ad "rest of season". This language is not about the term of the contract, it is about how the salary is calculated. It is calculated as a pro-ration of the full season minimum.

As I understand it, to waive the rest-of-season contract, you just do it whenever you want and the salary cap impact is only the amount already paid because the contracts are usually not guaranteed. Because GSV has so much salary cap, this is not a concern.

Thus, effectively there is zero difference in difficulty of waiving between any of the hardship, replacement or rest-of-season contracts. The players will all be waived or not depending on their performance, team needs and most importantly, roster spots.