Kaila Charles was cut five times. Now she’s a $1.2 million fixture for the Valkyries 9%
By Jane Kenny13%
7/25/2026, 1:00:00 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 18 faulty reasoning types, including Anecdotal, Appeal to Emotion, and Post Hoc (False Cause), with Optimism Bias as the most egregious example at 6% saturation with 86 hits. Analysis detected 646 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,435 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 25.2% and a BS Rank of 9% (20,077 of 21,886 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 91.70% of the article peer group.
Kaila Charles has always been focused on numbers.
But the Golden State Valkyries guard wasn’t thinking about the number of points she scored, the shots she made, or even the wins her teams racked up.
Somewhere along the way in her six-year WNBA career, she learned to stop doing math in her head.
Charles, 28, gave up counting how many players a team needed to cut before its opening game.
She quit wondering about where she ranked on the depth chart.
She stopped tracking the days and wondering when she’d open her locker for the last time.
After being waived five times in her first five WNBA seasons, Charles realized the calculations didn’t matter.
“You get PTSD where you’re always looking over your shoulder,” she said.
“You’re overthinking a bit, so you’re not playing freely because you’re constantly wondering, ‘OK, is today going to be the day?’”
One year after joining the Valkyries on a seven-day hardship contract, Charles now has a gift she’s never been afforded in her pro career: certainty.
This offseason, the Valkyries signed Charles to a two-year, fully guaranteed $1.2 million contract.
It was the first bit of security Charles has enjoyed through six years of battling for a place in the WNBA.
On a roster filled with players who have fought to earn or reclaim their place in the league, Charles’ winding path made her an immediate fit.
Veronica Burton had been waived in 2024.
Kayla Thornton had gone undrafted.
Kaitlyn Chen and Laeticia Amihere had both ridden a roller coaster with Golden State roster trims last year before earning their stay.
Even Gabby Williams, set to be an All-Star starter on Saturday, was forced to sit out a WNBA season because of the league’s prioritization rule — a part of the collective bargaining agreement that requires players with three or more years of league service to report to their teams by the start of training camp.
Charles is hardly the only Valkyrie who knows how to keep reaching for one more day.
“They did a great job of building a culture here, and a big part of our culture is that we’ve all been through something, and we’ve all had the mindset to see it through,” Charles said.
“We all work hard; we all push each other to work harder.”
Before Charles began earning nearly 20 minutes a night for a second-place Valkyries team (19-8 at the All-Star break) and holding a pivotal two-way guard role on Natalie Nakase’s second unit, she appeared in just five WNBA games from 2022-2024.
She’d been signed then quickly released on hardship contracts four times.
But Charles, whom Connecticut selected with the No. 23 pick in 2020, felt it was never a question of if, only when, she’d find her home in the league.
After the COVID-19 pandemic shortened her college career with the Maryland Terrapins, Charles didn’t wonder when she’d make the WNBA.
She’d wonder when everything would finally line up after waiting, getting cut, finding another opportunity, then starting all over again.
She’d been stationed at home in Prince George’s County, Maryland, working out at high school gyms with her older brother, Akil, as her trainer when the injury-riddled Valkyries called her agent.
Charles had admired what she’d seen of the organization from afar, but even then, her reaction was tempered.
“I was kind of hesitant because I didn’t want the same thing [to happen],” she said.
“I’d been on hardship [contracts] where I don’t even touch the floor.”
Charles thought about the life events she could enjoy in her time away from WNBA life — spending time with her young nieces and nephews, celebrating her grandmother’s 94th birthday with a surprise party in Trinidad and Tobago.
The sting of her release from the Dallas Wings, where she’d played 17 games to start the 2025 season, was still fresh.
Six weeks earlier, Charles was part of the Wings’ rotation for coach Chris Koclanes, who also coached Charles in Connecticut and brought her back to the WNBA for another opportunity four years later.
Charles had Akil fly out to watch her play in a WNBA game in person for the first time, in Las Vegas.
It was his first trip west of the Rocky Mountains.
She proudly showed him the team hotel, the pregame routine, and took him to dinner with teammates.
And for a few hours, he got to see the life his little sister had been chasing.
Then, on game day — June 13 against the Aces — the Wings waived her.
“It made me sick,” Akil said.
“To finally come out there, then watch that happen … it hurt.”
Still with the team, after their four-point loss, Charles didn’t slip out the back exit.
Instead, she walked out to see her brother while still wearing her uniform, smiling, taking photos, waving to fans, and shaking everyone’s hand.
“That just showed how mentally locked in she is and her character,” he said.
“Most people would’ve been gone.”
Three days later, Dallas re-signed Charles to a hardship contract.
This time, it would last just under two weeks, but it changed everything.
Her first game back with the Wings was on June 17, hosting the Valkyries.
In 24 minutes, Charles scored 10 points, grabbed five rebounds, and added four assists and three steals to finish with a team-best plus-21 in Dallas’ 80-71 win.
On the other sideline, Nakase was impressed.
“She kicked our ass almost single-handedly,” Nakase said after Charles joined the Valkyries.
Akil, four years older, had been coaching his younger sister long before either of them realized it.
As kids, she’d follow him around, and by that, it mostly meant Akil put her in charge of rebounding for him.
But eventually, a pickup game at the local recreational center needed one more player.
Akil reluctantly let his little sister join — and was never able to see her the same way.
Even then, Charles wasn’t scoring much.
She played up an age group, making her middle school team as a fifth-grader, and for years hardly scored at all.
She just did everything else.
And that became the foundation of her game — rebounding, defending, and making winning plays.
She was named a McDonald’s All-American in high school, then a three-time first-team All-Big Ten honoree at Maryland, but after bouncing around the WNBA and overseas in EuroLeague for years, she knew the next version of her game needed to look different.
Back home in between brief WNBA stints, Charles and her brother rebuilt her offensive skill set.
Every workout started with 30 minutes of ball handling.
They added in catch-and-shoot repetitions, pull-up jumpers, and creating off the dribble.
“In college and high school, she was setting screens and rolling,” Akil said.
“Now, she had to be somebody who could handle the ball, play multiple positions, and make herself valuable.”
Charles spent the 2023 winter starring overseas with Hungarian club DVTK Hun-Therm, but because the season extended beyond the WNBA’s prioritization deadline for training camp ahead of the 2024 season, league rules prevented her from reporting to a team.
So, she spent that summer suspended, instead of competing for a roster spot.
“It was frustrating because I really felt like that would’ve been a really good year for me,” Charles said.
“I felt like I was ready.”
But instead of dwelling on the situation, she leaned into everything she could.
She spent time with family, poured into younger players back home, and held herself accountable every day, training constantly.
Akil never doubted she’d be back.
“She was still on a rookie-scale contract, getting offered more money overseas,” he said.
“But with her, it wasn’t about the money.
It was always about finishing what she started.
She wanted to prove she belonged here because she truly loves the game.”
And the journey is what shapes the player Valkyries’ fans rally around today.
“It made her better because she had to learn how to be a star, how to be a cheerleader, how to be the bench-man,” Akil said.
“You have to learn how to be everything in order to be great.”
Charles, long past her days spent making calculations in her head at training camp, sees it too.
“As I’ve gone through it and kept getting the opportunity, for me, I just realized everything works out how it’s supposed to,” Charles said.
“Every cut, every team I’ve been on, I’ve learned from the people around me, the coaches, and it made me into the player I am today.”
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