I had a chance to witness San Francisco Bay Area history with the WNBA’s latest expansion team. On Friday, May 16th in San Francisco, I watched the Golden State Valkyries‘ franchise opener against the Los Angeles Sparks. The game featured the WNBA’s first ever Asian American coach, Natalie Nakase. Unfortunately, the first ever Taiwanese American WNBA draft pick Kaitlyn Chen was waived a few days before the opener (more on that later).
Impressive Ticket Sales, Attendance, and Noise
It was amazing to see the sold out Chase Center full of fans, especially with Moms and their daughters. There were plenty of fathers, sons, and others too for a total of 18,064 attending. This is a WNBA record for any debut for a new franchise team. In March, the Valkyries announced that they were the first WNBA team to have sold more than 10,000 season tickets – and they had yet to play a game! The Valkryies are the WNBA’s first expansion team since 2008 – the first season of the WNBA was in 1997.
The Chase Center was LOUD. I think the excitement of the crowd to finally see a WNBA team come to the San Francisco Bay Area was enthralling. The Chase Center sounded as loud as any Golden State Warriors game I’ve attended, if not louder.
Celebrities in the House
San Francisco native Ali Wong was first highlighted on the big screen, then a bunch of others, including: women’s soccer legend Brandi Chastain and Danielle Slaton, who are both co-founders of the Bay Area professional women’s soccer team Bay FC.
Later, the Chase Center highlighted a number of other notable basketball celebrities, including NBA basketball coach Doc Rivers (who Natalie Nakase had worked under), Golden State Warriors Coach Steve Kerr, and several Warriors players including Jonathan Kuminga, Kevon Looney, Brandin Podziemski and Buddy Hield.
The Game
Unfortunately, the Valkyries lost 84-67 lost to the Los Angeles Sparks. Apparently the Valkyries only had two weeks to practice as a team. This seems kind of ridiculous to me given that none of the players had ever played with each other.
I think the inexperience of playing together and the excitement yet nervousness of starting off as a new team lead to the team not playing as well. The Valkyries had a good number of turnovers, which was noted by the reporters at the press conference as well as Coach Nakase.
No Kaitlyn Chen
So as I had noted, the Golden State Valkyries had cut their roster down to 12 a few days before the franchise/season opener, and that included Taiwanese American Kaitlyn Chen. This annoyed me and many fans:
“A TikTok user named emmasdillemmas98 got to the heart of the fan frustration with the Chen roller coaster. “I get it, players get waived, it’s part of the league, but why are you going to promote the s—t out of this girl and then do that?” she said. “… To do that to players that aren’t guaranteed a spot in the first place feels shady. Like you are profiting off of them when they’re not even guaranteed this spot.”
…
Longtime women’s basketball fans will be quick to point out that Chen is not the first rookie to get cut just ahead of the WNBA season — she wasn’t even the first rookie the Valkyries waived this year — and she certainly won’t be the last, especially given historical precedent of rookies making final rosters. However, the issue at hand for many other fans was what happened in between the day she was unexpectedly drafted and Wednesday.It was certainly one thing for Chen to receive the experience of a lifetime when she was selected 30th overall in the 2025 WNBA Draft last month. The University of Connecticut guard was only in attendance to support former teammate Paige Bueckers, the first overall draft pick, and became the feel-good story of the evening when Commissioner Cathy Engelbert called her name as the first Taiwanese American to be drafted into the league.
From there on, Chen’s popularity far outshone what a typical third-round player goes through. Case in point, the WNBA is not even five years removed from it being almost impossible to buy jerseys of the league MVP. But Chen’s jersey quickly became one of the league’s top sellers, not just among rookies but among all WNBA players — an archive link of the league store shows her jersey above the likes of Cameron Brink, Hailey Van Lith and Sabrina Ionescu.
It certainly looked like Chen was an integral part of the organization right up until she was cut. There was no official announcement of the waiving, just a social media post of the final roster, with Chen conspicuously absent.”
It’s ridiculous for the WNBA and the Golden State Valkyries to promote Chen and then dump her. I am really hoping Chen does get picked up by some team, even if she’s not playing locally for the Valkyries.
Golden State Valkyries’ Franchise Opener Overall
Overall, I had a great experience at my first ever WNBA game. It was something really special being able to witness San Francisco Bay Area sports history with Golden State Valkyries’ franchise opener, including with the WNBA’s first ever Asian American coach, Natalie Nakase. It was still great even though Kaitlyn Chen didn’t make the final cut on the team. I look forward to the Valkyries winning a future championship!
