Lynx can protect six players from Valkyries in WNBA expansion draft

Expansion is about to get very real for the 12 existing WNBA teams.

The Golden State Valkyries will begin play next summer. They will draft fifth in the 2025 draft.

Before that, on Dec. 6, they will hold the WNBA’s first expansion draft since 2008.

Teams — including the Lynx — have until Monday afternoon to produced a list of six protected players exempt from that expansion draft.

Apart from those six players, every player whose rights are controlled are available to the Valkyries.

That includes anyone on the active roster as well as drafted players who have yet to play in the WNBA. For the Lynx that list will include post Jessica Shepard, who didn’t play for the Lynx last season after playing in Europe due to the WNBA’s exclusion rule.

It would also, technically, include a player like Maya Moore, who hasn’t played since 2018 but who hasn’t filed retirement papers with the league and whose rights are still owned by the Lynx.

The list of available players need not include veteran unrestricted free agents like Myisha Hines-Allen and Natisha Hiedeman.

Golden State can choose only one player from each team.

The Lynx have the entire starting five from last season’s WNBA finals team under contract for next season in Napheesa Collier, Kayla McBride, Alanna Smith, Courtney Williams and Bridget Carleton and presumably would protect that unit.

Also under contract are Diamond Miller and Dorka Juhász, who just completed their second season after making the WNBA all-rookie team in 2023, and Alissa Pili, who was a rookie first-round pick in 2024.

The protected lists will not be made public, however.