Valkyries GM Declines To Explain Why She Traded Flau’jae Johnson For Two Second-Rounders

Preliminary reaction among Valkyries fans was enthusiastic though short-lived, because the team traded her to the Seattle Storm within an hour of making the pick. The deal made by Valkyries general manager Ohemaa Nyanin is difficult to rationally explain. In exchange for Johnson, Golden State received the first pick of the 2026 second round, which they used on TCU's Marta Suarez, and the Storm's 2028 second-rounder. Whatever you think of Johnson and Suarez as prospects, the eighth pick is worth more than two second-rounders. Usually when teams make trades like this on draft night, it's the team moving up that overspends for the right to take a player it's fixated on, not the team moving down. This is also out of character for Nyanin, who impressed in her first season by building an expansion roster that made it to the playoffs. It would've been great to hear her explain the trade, but she declined to do so after the draft. The first question of the presser was obviously about the trade, and this was Nyanin's answer in full: