Veronica Burton went from overlooked to indispensable with the Golden State Valkyries

OAKLAND, Calif. — In the historic Australian gold rush town of Bendigo, Veronica Burton felt great but had no idea how good it would get.

Her WNBA career had been a wisp. Three seasons. Not much court time or production.

Playing the best basketball of her professional career, even overseas, colored the picture Burton had of herself. It also didn't guarantee anyone back home would see her that way.

In fact, the Connecticut Sun had already informed Burton she'd be unprotected in the forthcoming expansion draft. Feeling unwanted isn't fun. Feeling like you're floating in space is something else. Who knew if this new franchise in the Bay Area would select her. Who knew if she'd have to return to a club with minimal belief in her. Who knew if this WNBA pursuit would leave her with little more than a handful of pyrite crystals.

"It was almost like a make-or-break in a sense," Burton said. "I knew I could carve out a role in this league, but I could have gone either way for sure."

She's sitting in a lobby down the hall from the Golden State Valkyries' practice gym, on an off-day amid a pursuit of a championship, which spoils the ending but not the moral.

The roster math of an expansion era has created more opportunity in one of the hardest leagues in the world to make. No player benefitted more, or took better advantage, than a 5-foot-9 guard who has become one of the WNBA's most valuable assets because she got the chance to.

It required Burton to loosen her grip while running a high-functioning operation, and it required a coach willing to help a fastidious point guard navigate that paradox. And when the 2026 regular season ended, four-time MVP A'ja Wilson of the Las Vegas Aces sat atop the leaderboard for win shares, a measure of a single player's contribution to team success. In second place? Burton, who averaged 2.6 points before she got here.

"When you get poured into, when you get treated like a professional, when people and your teammates believe in you, then you can see the difference," 14-year veteran Tiffany Hayes said of Burton. "Her standing and believing in herself, not giving it up, it's a testament to her and who she is. And that's why she's our leader."

Ever-excitable Warriors and Valkyries co-owner Joe Lacob predicted a title within five years for an upstart franchise already valued at a billion dollars . Still, he couldn't have known it could happen sooner because the front office scooped a franchise point guard off the discard pile.

A breakout arrived immediately, when both the Valkyries — and, arguably, Burton herself — existed in a real way for the first time.

She played almost as much in Year 1 with Golden State (1,292 minutes) as she had in three seasons with Dallas and Connecticut combined (1,496). She won the league's Most Improved Player award, made second-team All-Defense and finished ninth in MVP balloting. Her numbers this season, in every meaningful category, were the same or better.

In summary, Burton stopped being afraid of what might happen when she tried to make things happen. Her club is now one win away from the semifinals, entering Friday night's Game 3 against the Dallas Wings.

"I've come into myself and been surrounded by people that fully see me, what I bring to the table," she said. "I think that allows me to play with that freedom rather than a timidness. When I play timid basketball, I'm not a very good basketball player, and it doesn't go well for me."

When she entered the WNBA in 2022 after an All-Big Ten career at Northwestern, 144 spots were available across 12 teams. Those are suffocating odds, even for a player selected seventh in the draft. After all, two years after Dallas selected Burton in the first round, it waived her before the season began.

In this context, Burton's control-freak tendencies — "I like everything to go exactly how I planned it or envisioned it, and that's just not reality," she said now — were more of a liability than a strength.

During training camps, every play felt like a final exam. If it was OK to make a mistake, she didn't know it, and no one convinced her otherwise.

"I just had this hyper-awareness of every single thing that I was doing to a fault," Burton said.

The situation in Golden State, in a way, exerted even more pressure. If Burton couldn't establish herself with an expansion franchise, what then?

In this, the clever mind tricks of her new coach, Natalie Nakase, were a release. Nakase asks every player how she wants to be coached, and then she coaches them that way. Some want to be yelled at. Some want to be pulled aside for corrections instead of public flogging.

When asked, Burton said she thrives with a coach who believes in her.

"Every shot, anything we did," Nakase said, "positive reinforcement, positive reinforcement."

Burton's very first line for Golden State put the theory to the test. A little more than 17 minutes played, with zero field goals and only three assists in a blowout loss to the Los Angeles Sparks.

She might've sensed unsettled ground below her feet as she began the obligatory film breakdown with Nakase. However, her mistakes weren't crimes. From her new coach's perspective, they were necessary.

"She's just like, 'I don't care if you turn the ball over,'" Burton recalled. "'You're not trying to turn the ball over. I get what you're seeing here.' And I think that was, again, a level of reassurance that I hadn't had."

Relinquishing a desire to control every outcome was a big deal. It doesn't happen, though, without permission.

"I didn't feel like I had to continue to prove myself every single day," Burton said.

Now she's an emblem, among a growing collection of them.

Marina Mabrey matriculated to the expansion Toronto Tempo, improved her per-100-possession scoring by 12 points and made her first All-Star team in 2026. With the first-year Portland Fire, guard Carla Leite doubled her scoring (7.2 points to 16.1 points) and tripled her assist output (2.0 to 6.3) after Golden State left her unprotected. Veteran center Megan DiLeo never averaged more than 7.9 points or started more than seven games in her first seven WNBA seasons. She averaged 13.1 points and started 32 games for the Fire this year.

Stars spotted for the first time, when maybe you couldn't find them with a telescope before. With three more teams on the way before 2030 — in Cleveland , Detroit and Philadelphia — the sky gets even wider.

Still, Burton remembers the dark. Or maybe it's more like she can't forget it. It's why she immediately contacted Golden State fan favorite Kate Martin when Martin was let go near the end of training camp, and why she welcomed Martin over for a taco dinner with former Valkyries teammates when Martin and her new team, the Sparks, came through San Francisco for the first time this summer.

"Whenever anyone gets cut in this league, it's brutal," Burton said. "You build all these relationships and then suddenly your life just kind of shifts. So any roster change that happens, I try to reach out and remind people that this isn't the end of their story or the end of their career. And, honestly, it could be just a new beginning for them."

Sometimes, it's stunning what you unearth when you dig into new ground.

"I didn't even know the Golden State Valkyries were going to be a thing," Burton said, "and here I am."