OAKLAND — It’s been 22 days since the Valkyries’ stunning draft night trade that sent Flau’jae Johnson to Seattle for former Cal standout Marta Suarez and a 2028 second-round pick.
On Tuesday, general manager Ohemaa Nyanin finally broke her silence about her thinking behind the deal at the Valkyries’ media day. The explanation she offered didn’t pull the curtain back all the way on the swap, but gave some insight to why the trade went down.
“The decision making around the draft had a lot to do with cap flexibility,” general Ohemaa Nyanin said. “We had the opportunity, or we thought we had the opportunity, to potentially sign another athlete. My job, very specifically, is to make sure that we maintain understanding of what’s happening today and then what could happen in the future. The flexibility that is needed to really be able to withstand whatever could happen in the future is something that I hold dear to me.”
Now, with the regular season set to begin on Friday night and Johnson in a Seattle uniform, Nyanin’s long-awaited answer has arrived three days after Golden State waived Suarez.
Golden State Valkyries general manager Ohemaa Nyanin takes questions during their media day at the Sephora Performance Center in Oakland, Calif., on Tuesday, May 5, 2026.
Suarez has since cleared waivers and is now eligible to return to the Valkyries on a developmental contract. However, Nyanin did not explicitly say the team would bring Suarez back.
“A lot of athletes are in consideration for these two developmental spots because they are new,” Nyanin said. “How we use them is something that we’re still kind of in conversations about. We want to definitely make sure that we aren’t signing athletes, waiving them, signing them and releasing them. That’s not the type of organization that we are. So we want to be very thoughtful and intentional as to how we use these spots.”
Nyanin did not mention who the Valkyries would have tried to sign with the extra cap space, but said the draft night situation was fluid and that she wanted to keep some flexibility to make a move if one had presented itself.
“On a day-to-day basis, and with the condensed nature, there were so many opportunities and so many variables in order to make the decisions that needed to be made at that one time,” Nyanin said. “I was in conversations with a lot of different athletes at the time to then try to figure out how to make a decision on that night and what we were going to do.”
The Valkyries saved nearly $40,000 by trading down from the eighth pick to the 16th.
On draft night, Nyanin had repeatedly declined to explain the reasoning behind the deal, at one point telling reporters she needed to “take a beat” before responding, citing exhaustion and a desire to be “thoughtful” when discussing players’ abilities. She also declined to say whether salary cap considerations had factored into the move, telling reporters flatly, “I don’t talk or comment about salary cap.”
ESPN reported on draft night that the trade between Golden State and Seattle was agreed to before Johnson was initially selected by Golden State with the eighth overall pick.
Nyanin further clarified that the pick had nothing to do with Johnson and was more about the value of the draft slot.
“What I would say is the timeline for our draft pick was not necessarily to trade one person or the other. Going into the draft, we had a lot of contingency plans as to what it is that we were looking for,” Nyanin said. “I also had had a lot of conversations with different teams to figure out what trade options were, and then at the time when we figured out that this was a trade that we wanted to make.
“The trade was for the rights of the number eight pick, for the number 16 pick and a future second. No athlete was considered at that moment in terms of us trading an athlete at number eight.”
The Valkyries have until 2 p.m. on Thursday to finalize their roster. They have not yet filled their developmental roster spots and still have to make cuts to their roster.
“What we’re considering is to create the best team possible to start the season,” Nyanin said.