While the Golden State Valkyries continue to bask in the glow of the 2026 WNBA Championship, there appear to be some stormy clouds on the offseason horizon regarding the future of their 2025 lottery pick, Juste Jocyte.
In her home country of Lithuania, Jocyte spoke candidly to the European media about her mixed feelings regarding her rookie season with Golden State this past year, a season in which she won a championship and endeared herself to the Valkyries’ fanbase and local community, but also did not see much playing time in the process.
(Note that all quotes from Jocyte were translated from Lithuanian to English through Google Translate and cross-checked with DeepL Translate. As such, take Jocyte’s quotes with a grain of salt, as some nuances of the Lithuanian language are bound to be lost in translation. Additionally, the translated quotes were reviewed by a fluent Lithuanian speaker, who deemed it to be a fairly accurate translation with no glaring mistakes. The original article is linked here.)
“I had very mixed feelings about this victory,” Jocyte said to BasketNews. “At the end-of-season press conference, I said that, on the one hand, I do understand the situation as to why I didn’t play, but it’s such a mixed feeling. I’m happy for the team, but on the other hand, I didn’t really contribute much. It’s both really fun and, in a way, a bit sad, because you don’t feel the same way, you don’t care as much. And I don’t even know where I stand – whether I’d want to come back next year – so it’s a very mixed feeling.”
Jocyte revealed that she and her team informed Valkyries general manager, Ohemaa Nyanin, that she does not want to return to Golden State, telling reporters that her reasons stem from her frayed relationship with head coach Natalie Nakase.
“I had a conversation with the general manager that I wouldn’t really want to return, even though it’s a very good organization,” Jocyte said. “We just became champions, but from the perspective of my personal growth, it’s hard to imagine going back to the same coach, who doesn’t really communicate well and doesn’t seem to like me very much. My thoughts are that I don’t really want to return to that team. As for a trade, that’s a different story, and we’ll see later, but right now my preliminary thoughts are that I really wouldn’t want to go back.”
Juste Jocyte and Natalie Nakase’s relationship
For Jocyte, the lack of communication and favor she felt from Nakase stemmed from not having a serious and official conversation with the coach to clear up why she wasn’t playing.
“Honestly, the whole month of June was just one excuse after another,” Jocyte said. “At first, you understand that it takes time to get into the groove– the plays and everything else– but when they’ve been saying the same thing for two weeks now, that I need to learn the plays. I think it took me more or less a day, and that was it. There was never any serious, official conversation with the coach about what, who, or why. There’s a lot of uncertainty. Then you think: ‘Well, this is about nothing. If you don’t like me as a player, if I don’t fit the style—that’s fine, but just communicate it.’”
The Jocyte using the word “excuse” is notable as a source close to the situation described how a big part of her frustration regarding her lack of playing time stemmed from not having much clarity as to what Nakase and the Valkyries wanted from her.
The source explained that Jocyte and her camp felt that Nakase wasn’t consistent with her reasoning to the media regarding why she didn’t play, and that Nakase cycling through different reasons for not giving Jocyte playing time made it difficult for her to decipher what she needed to do to climb the rotation.
Early after Jocyte arrived, Nakase maintained that she wanted to ease her into the lineup from both a health and conditioning standpoint and an X’s and O’s standpoint. But as Jocyte’s minutes didn’t materialize, aside from her long and successful second-half stint against the Indiana Fever on May 28th, Nakase’s reasons to the media for not playing Jocyte began to shift.
After not playing much against the Las Vegas Aces on June 6th, Nakase explained in a media scrum two days later on June 8th that it was matchup-based and emphasized, “I don't ever want to throw a player in there if they don't know exactly what we're looking for, because then I'm not setting them up for success.”
A day later, Nakase, when asked about the role she foresees for Jocyte, said they were planning on grooming her to become a lead ballhandler. Three days after those comments, Nakase noted that it would take time for Jocyte to evolve into a point guard.
Of all of Nakase’s explanations, the source noted, her insinuating that Jocyte needed to evolve into a point guard and develop primary ballhandler skills before she could get playing time was the one that frustrated her and her camp the most because that development plan shied away from her strengths as a wing who works better next to a secondary ballhandler. To Jocyte’s sentiment, overseas she was at her best and in her element playing with renowned European point guards like Julie Allemand, Marine Fauthoux, and Klara Holm.
Regardless, by the time July arrived, Jocyte's minutes had dwindled to nothing. And by then, the Valkyries were rattling off wins left and right, which quieted questions regarding Jocyte’s playing time as the media shifted their focus away from Golden State’s strange situation with their rookie.
Still, Nakase’s carousel of reasons for not playing Jocyte were always sound and defensible. Given the depth of Golden State’s rotation, the veteran players ahead of Jocyte that Nakase would have had to supplant for a rookie, and the difficulties of tossing a 20-year-old into a win-now situation, it’s easy to understand the Valkyries coach’s thinking. It’s also hard to question Nakase’s process as Golden State achieved their ultimate goal: winning a championship. As such, the optics of a reserve bench player complaining about her playing time in such a public manner don't exactly favor Jocyte.
And Jocyte herself even expressed some understanding as to why the Valkyries weren’t playing her, especially during the postseason, as she said in her exit interview in Oakland last week: “I don't think the team can have that kind of attitude of being sad or bad or whatever.”
Regardless, without an official conversation between player and coach– one that could have allowed both parties to work through their expectations and allow Nakase to explain her vision for the young rookie– a source with an understanding of Jocyte thinking explained that she felt left in the dark as she attempted to fulfill what she was being asked to do, leaving her to wonder what she was doing wrong and if there ever was a serious development plan for her in the first place, further frustrating her as DNP-CD after DNP-CD piled up.
And based on her recent comments, Jocyte’s sentiments remain strong.
“There were no conversations from the coach’s side,” Jocyte said, explaining that while the Valkyries assistant coaches pushed for her playing time, she still felt a disconnect from Nakase.
“It seems like I’m so hopeless on defense that I don’t stand a chance and can’t play. There were countless games where we were winning by 20 points, and they still wouldn’t let me play. You can tell that something isn’t quite right with what’s being said. If they want to develop my physicality, I should still be getting some playing time. I left without really understanding why I spent practically the entire season sitting on the bench.”
Where do the Juste Jocyte and the Valkyries go from here?
Whether or not bridges can be mended between Jocyte and the Valkyries remains to be seen. But based on Jocyte’s comments, it appears that as of this moment, the two parties don’t have much of a long-term future. Jocyte was asked how Nyanin reacted when she communicated her desire not to return to Golden State, to which she said:
“The general manager’s response was simply: ‘Okay.’ And I’m thinking: wow, they had such high hopes—I was the club’s first-round pick, and there were so many expectations, they showed so much interest—but when I said I didn’t want to come back, the response was just “okay.” It’s not exactly a blow below the belt, but it seems like they don’t really care.”
Whether or not the Valkyries actually don’t care about her trade request isn’t all that important. What does matter is her trade value, which will dictate Golden State’s next course of action. And given that her trade value is currently low because she didn’t play all that much this season and because her situation with the Valkyries has become tenuous, it’s hard to see the Valkyries commanding much of a return for her, unless they add in future draft assets.
With that in mind, it could be in Golden State’s best interest to rehabilitate the relationship with Jocyte, whether that’s to drum up her value for a midseason trade next season or recommit to her as a key building block of their future. But from Jocyte’s side of things, she quite literally explained how she thinks a trade to get her out of Golden State could go down.
“A trade would work like this: you look into which teams are interested in you, and if they have something to offer the Valkyries, then it could happen. But if the other team doesn’t really have much to offer, then that’s a different story,” Jocyte said.
Article Continues Below“Another thing is that a new team is joining the league, and the question is whether the Valkyries will protect me. There will be an expansion draft, during which existing teams protect 5–6 of their players, and the new team can select the rest. There’s a real chance that I won’t be protected and the new team will take me without any trades.”
The expansion draft Jocyte’s referring to will be for when the Cleveland Sirens join the WNBA in 2028. There’s a full season between now and then, so waiting for the Sirens to pluck her out of the Bay would take some time.
But there is another caveat to the leverage Jocyte possesses– the threat of her potentially sitting out the 2027 WNBA season.
With the 2027 FIBA EuroBasket returning next summer, Jocyte could potentially forgo playing for the Valkyries next season and stay overseas in Lithuania to prepare for the tournament. Golden State would still retain her rights, but it's a scenario that could further tank her trade prospects, making it so the Valkyries get no value out of their former lottery pick, with the Sirens lurking to take her in the expansion draft in 2028 the following year.
Thus, there would be urgency on the Valkyries' end to find a solution should Jocyte hang the threat of sitting out the 2027 season over their heads.
It should also be noted that Jocyte and the Valkyries have already had difficulties in the past hashing out her overseas obligations. Sources say that the complications around releasing Jocyte from her duties with Spar Girona, which forced her to miss the Valkyries’ training camp and the first five games of the regular season, stemmed from Golden State not paying the buyout necessary to allow her to leave the club. This complication was corroborated by The Podium Finish’s WNBA insider Conrado Pascual on his latest episode of the Podhalla podcast.
Regardless, there’s a lot of time between now and the beginning of the 2027 WNBA season. A lot can change on both sides, especially if the two sides meet to hash things out. The Valkyries also have free agency questions to sift through as they look to reload for a title defense, and Jocyte could very well determine that Golden State is actually where she wants to be. Additionally, Jocyte still has many fans within the Valkyries organization, lending credence to the idea the relationship could be salvaged.
But as of right now, the relationship is in tatters, and it’s going to take some real effort to mend fences, if that’s still even possible.
“Of course, it’s still too early to talk about a trade, but when it comes time to talk specifically with the agents, maybe they’ll change their tune and say they won’t let me go anywhere, since they have the right to retain my rights,” Jocyte said. “But there will definitely be talks. Who would have thought… It’s a real shame to leave a team like this after winning a championship, but I still have to think about it from a personal standpoint—I can’t just sit on the bench for another season.”
ClutchPoints reached out to the Valkyries regarding Jocyte’s quotes but did not immediately respond to the request for comment.