Justė Jocytė Won a Ring on the Bench — Now She May Not Come Back to Golden State

On November 4, Justė Jocytė ran along the Embarcadero in sunglasses and a parade shirt, high-fiving fans and spraying champagne while San Francisco celebrated the Golden State Valkyries' first championship. A week later she was home in Lithuania, telling a very different story about the season that had just ended.

In an interview with BasketNews in her home country, Jocytė said the title came with mixed feelings because she had barely been part of it on the court. In remarks translated from Lithuanian and carried by multiple outlets, she said she had already told general manager Ohemaa Nyanin that she would not really want to return, and that it was hard to imagine going back to the same coach — Natalie Nakase — whom she described as a poor communicator who did not seem to like her. The interview was given in Lithuanian, and both CBS Sports and SFGATE note that the exact wording runs through translation. Beat writers who compared the translations agree on the substance, and nobody around the team has disputed it.

The numbers explain the frustration. Golden State took Jocytė fifth overall in the 2025 WNBA Draft, the first draft pick in franchise history, and she arrived this May with a résumé most 20-year-olds cannot touch: a professional since her early teens, the youngest player ever to appear in EuroLeague Women at 14, a EuroCup winner at 17. Her debut, on May 25 against Connecticut, looked like the start of something. She entered with 4:48 left, scored on her first possession five seconds later, and finished a perfect 2-for-2. The ovation was loud. It also turned out to be close to her season highlight.

Jocytė appeared in 16 of the Valkyries' 44 games. She averaged 3.1 points and 1.1 assists in 8.1 minutes, reached double figures in minutes only six times, and played five minutes across two appearances in the entire postseason. In Game 7 of the Finals, the night Golden State beat Atlanta to finish the title, she did not play at all — a coach's decision in the official record.

The reasons kept moving

What stings, according to the reporting around her camp, is not only the benching. ClutchPoints reporter Kenzo Fukuda, who first flagged the interview in the United States, reported through a source close to the situation that Jocytė and her camp were frustrated by explanations that kept changing.

SFGATE laid out the sequence from Nakase's public comments across the season: first Jocytė needed rest after her European season, then it was about specific matchups, then she needed to become more of a true point guard — the note her camp found most frustrating, because it asked her to play against her strengths — and then it was about her defense. CBS Sports reported the same grievance: she never fully understood what she had to do to climb the rotation. Neither Nakase nor Nyanin has addressed any of it publicly since the interview surfaced.

The owner has. Joe Lacob went on Tim Kawakami's podcast this week and tried to lower the temperature without closing any door. "She's competitive and would like to win and didn't play," Lacob said. "But you know, she's also only 20. We had a pretty great roster, very deep. I think she can be a very good player, and we'd really love to have her back." He added that he expects her to earn a lot more playing time in the future. A league source told Valkyries Beat the team still sees her as part of its future.

The last quiet offseason until 2030

Wanting her back and keeping her are different problems, because the calendar is working against Golden State. Jocytė is under contract through 2028 with a team option for 2029 and will make less than $400,000 next season, so this is not a money fight. Her deal is unprotected, which means the Valkyries could waive her for nothing — a step CBS Sports calls highly unlikely for a 20-year-old former lottery pick. The real pressure is structural. This is the last offseason without an expansion draft until 2030, with Cleveland arriving in 2028 and Detroit and Philadelphia behind it. If she stays unhappy, Golden State eventually has to protect a player who may not want to be there, ahead of players who do, or leave her exposed and risk losing the first pick it ever made for nothing.

Her other options do not require the Valkyries' permission. She could stay in Europe — her club, Spar Girona, is close to home, and she already spent 2025 away from Golden State on a suspended contract. She could sit out 2027: Lithuania hosts EuroBasket Women next June, she was always going to miss part of that season for it, and Golden State would keep her rights either way. Or the two sides could do what Lacob's comments sounded like an attempt at — talk, reset the role, and try again.

What cannot happen is nothing. Golden State built its first championship on depth and on players accepting small roles, and by every account Jocytė accepted hers in public all season. The bill for that acceptance has now arrived, in her own words — and the champions have to decide what the first pick in their history is worth before the rest of the league gets a chance to decide for them.