Juste Jocyte tells BasketNews she does not want to return to the Valkyries
Juste Jocyte told BasketNews on Nov. 8 that she does not really want to return to the Golden State Valkyries. In the FCB log, her first WNBA season is 16 games at 8.1 minutes, third-lowest estimated total among top-5 picks since 2008.
Lowest first-season totals in the FCB log
These are the 12 lowest estimated totals. Jocyte is third. Chelsea Dungee and Sabrina Ionescu are lower.
| Rank | Player | Draft | First season | Games | MPG | Est. minutes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Chelsea Dungee | 2021, No. 5 | 2021 | 14 | 4.6 | 64.4 |
| 2 |  Sabrina Ionescu | 2020, No. 1 | 2020 | 3 | 26.7 | 80.1 |
| 3 |  Juste Jocyte | 2025, No. 5 | 2026 | 16 | 8.1 | 129.6 |
| 4 |  Awak Kuier | 2021, No. 2 | 2021 | 16 | 8.9 | 142.4 |
| 5 |  Katie Lou Samuelson | 2019, No. 4 | 2019 | 20 | 7.7 | 154.0 |
| 6 |  Rachel Banham | 2016, No. 4 | 2016 | 15 | 10.9 | 163.5 |
| 7 |  Elizabeth Williams | 2015, No. 4 | 2015 | 21 | 11.7 | 245.7 |
| 8 |  Nyara Sabally | 2022, No. 5 | 2023 | 33 | 7.9 | 260.7 |
| 9 | Amber Harris | 2011, No. 4 | 2011 | 27 | 10.3 | 278.1 |
| 10 |  Cheyenne Parker-Tyus | 2015, No. 5 | 2015 | 30 | 9.3 | 279.0 |
| 11 |  Amanda Zahui B. | 2015, No. 2 | 2015 | 31 | 9.7 | 300.7 |
| 12 | Bella Alarie | 2020, No. 5 | 2020 | 22 | 14.0 | 308.0 |
Source: draft order is the WNBA.com page for that year, checked Nov. 10, 2026. Minutes are the Full Court Buckets regular-season log. Data through Nov. 10, 2026. Methods: first season is the earliest regular season with a game, including a player who sat out the draft year. Estimated minutes are the stored minutes-per-game figure times games, rounded to one decimal. They are not a sum of box-score seconds. Jocyte is 8.1 times 16, or 129.6. Stories that say 129 are rounding that product. She is fourth on minutes per game, behind Dungee (4.6), Samuelson (7.7) and Sabally (7.9). Ionescu's 80.1 minutes came in 3 games at 26.7 per game. Seven top-5 picks have no line in the log, so this is not a ranking of every pick. The data is free to use and republish (CC0). Download CSV (CC0)
Dungee played fewer minutes per game. Ionescu played a three-game season. Jocyte's 16 games at 8.1 minutes are a different shape from both.
The 2025 top five in 2026
Paige Bueckers, Dominique Malonga, Sonia Citron and Kiki Iriafen were 2026 All-Stars. Jocyte was not. She is also the only one of the five whose first WNBA season was not the draft year.
| Player | 2025 pick | Games | MPG | PPG | 2026 All-Star |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Paige Bueckers | 1 | 42 | 32.8 | 20.9 | Starter |
 Dominique Malonga | 2 | 35 | 26.4 | 17.1 | Reserve |
 Sonia Citron | 3 | 40 | 33.0 | 16.8 | Reserve |
 Kiki Iriafen | 4 | 41 | 28.1 | 15.3 | Reserve |
| Juste Jocyte | 5 | 16 | 8.1 | 3.1 | Not selected |
Source: regular-season lines are the Full Court Buckets 2026 log. Data through Nov. 10, 2026. Methods: regular season only. Playoffs are not in these averages. All-Star status is the July 2, 2026 starters release and the reserves release. Jocyte is not named on either page. Bueckers is listed as a starter and as a second All-Star selection. Citron and Iriafen are reserves and second selections. Malonga is a reserve and a first selection. The in-season averages in those releases are not the final lines in this table. The data is free to use and republish (CC0). Download CSV (CC0)
Headshots in the tables are the licensed photos already on the player pages. Credits are on those pages.
What she told Lithuanian outlets
The English below is a Full Court Buckets translation of the Lithuanian. It is not a transcript of Jocyte speaking English.
BasketNews published the interview on Nov. 8, 2026. The headline is her line, "Nelabai noriu grįžti į tą komandą," which means she does not really want to go back to that team. The part of the interview that loads without a subscription says she took the title in a very mixed way. She said she had already said, at the end-of-season press conference, that she sort of understood why she did not play, and that the feeling was ambiguous. It was nice for the team, she said, and she did not really contribute. She said she did not even know her own position on whether she would want to go back next year. The free text stops mid-sentence, after she says she still has not fully understood why she did not play, "and those excuses..." The rest is behind BasketNews's BN+ paywall. This page did not open it.
LRT published a separate television interview on Nov. 9. The interviewer said Jocyte had already mentioned that she would not really want to return. Her answer:
"I don't know a person who would want to come back with a smile after a season like this. If the situation had been different, if they had given me a chance and let me play, then maybe they would have seen that I was not really ready. But now they did not try at all and did not let me show what I can do, and they did not explain why. That is why I don't really want to go back."
She said the staff talked at first about physicality, adjusting, and learning the plays, and that she was left without the real reason. "The idea of physicality is very broad. I don't know if they wanted me to become the most physical player in a week."
On changing teams, she told LRT a trade is possible if the two clubs agree, and that a new team arriving next year is another option. She said she is not in a hurry, and that she is not in a hurry to return to America because it is not her dream country. She did not name general manager Ohemaa Nyanin in the LRT interview this page read.
Kenzo Fukuda's Nov. 9 post is the note English-language stories are built on. He wrote that a lot can be lost in a machine translation, and that Jocyte had told Nyanin and the front office she does not want to return. His Nov. 10 ClutchPoints story says the translation of the full BasketNews interview was checked by a Lithuanian speaker, and it quotes her describing a conversation with the general manager. Those sentences are in the paywalled portion. This page does not repeat them as verified quotes.
Sporting News wrote that she asked Nyanin to facilitate a trade. Yardbarker, reprinting Larry Brown Sports, and EssentiallySports also describe a trade request. The LRT answer this page translated says a trade is possible and that she is not in a hurry. It does not say she has asked the team to trade her.
A search of the Valkyries site on Nov. 10 did not turn up a response. The team's offseason tracker, updated April 18, records the April 12 activation of her rookie scale contract and does not mention the November interviews. ClutchPoints wrote that the team had not immediately answered a request for comment. No statement from the team or from Jocyte was on the pages checked for this story.
The minutes other stories are using
15min, in a separate Nov. 10 interview that is paywalled after the first answer, prints 16 regular-season games, 8.1 minutes, 3.1 points and 1.1 assists, plus two playoff appearances, 5 minutes and 3 points. The FCB regular-season line matches the 16 games, 8.1 minutes, 3.1 points, 0.8 rebounds and 1.1 assists. Her WNBA.com player page and the Valkyries roster list the same 3.1, 0.8 and 1.1, and list her at 6-0. The page calls her Golden State's first draft pick, taken fifth in 2025. Birthdate on that page is Nov. 19, 2005.
Yardbarker's "18 games" is 16 regular-season games plus 2 playoff games. Sporting News's "129 minutes" is 16 times 8.1, rounded down from 129.6. This page does not use 129 as a counted total.
The two playoff games on the official box scores are not a flat five minutes. On Sept. 27, First Round Game 1, Dallas at Golden State, she played 3:06 and scored 3 points in a 104-80 win. On Oct. 21, Finals Game 3, she played 1:59, scored 0 and had 1 assist in a 97-71 loss. That is 5:05 across two games, and 3 points. She did not appear in the other 11 Valkyries playoff games on the box scores checked Nov. 10, including Game 7. EssentiallySports's "two minutes in the Finals" is the Game 3 stint only. It leaves out the 3:06 on Sept. 27.
The WNBA.com Game 7 recap and our recap both have Golden State winning 68-63 on Oct. 31. The BasketNews interview is eight days later.
What the rules say about next season
She is not a free agent on the strength of one season played. The Valkyries' April 12 note says they activated her rookie scale contract. Article V, Section 4(a) of the signed agreement says a draft rookie's scale contract covers three seasons and gives the team an option for a fourth, which the team may exercise by May 1 after the second season. Section 4(c) says a scale contract signed after the first regular season following the draft uses the salary table for the same draft slot in the draft just before the first season the contract covers. This page does not have her contract, so it does not print a dollar figure.
Our 2027 free-agent file lists her as reserved, with one season on record. That label is the class if a contract ends. It is not a finding that her deal ends after 2026. Head coach Natalie Nakase is still the coach in that coaching file.
Article XIV, Section 9(c) says the prioritization suspension does not apply to a player with zero, one or two years of service at the end of the previous season. A year of service, in the agreement's definition, is a season on a standard contract in which she was on the active list for any part of the regular season. She was on the active list in 2026. The 2027 prioritization suspension in that section does not apply to her on that count. LRT has her planning an offseason league, Project B, and saying she is not rushing back to the United States. She did not say in that interview that she will skip the 2027 WNBA season.
Article XIV, Section 1 says a player who publicly expresses a desire to be traded is in violation of that section. The LRT answer describes a trade as possible and says she is not in a hurry. This page does not decide whether that answer is the request the section names.
She told LRT a new team is coming next year. The April 9, 2026 Board of Governors release says Cleveland begins play in 2028, Detroit in 2029 and Philadelphia in 2030. The 2026 expansion draft FAQ said each existing team could protect up to five players. That draft has already been held. This page did not find a published protection number for 2028.
The seven top-5 picks with no line in the minutes file are Jayne Appel (2010, No. 5), Evelyn Akhator (2017, No. 3), Nia Coffey (2017, No. 5), Lauren Cox (2020, No. 3), Kysre Gondrezick (2021, No. 4), Stephanie Soares (2023, No. 4) and Lou Lopez Sénéchal (2023, No. 5). A lower first season for any of them would change the rank. Their names and the draft-page links are in the second CSV.
How this story was made: Full Court Buckets articles are written by Ryan Moalemi, sometimes with AI assistance, and every stat is checked against official WNBA box scores and the sources cited in the story. How we make Full Court Buckets
Full Court Buckets · WNBA News. Analysis. Commentary.