Kayla Thornton from the left corner, and other trends
Golden State doesn't only shoot from the left corner, but their #LeftCornerBestCorner start to the season pairs neatly with early-season trends.
With no game between our last post (everything you ever wanted to see about rebounding) and today’s, we have a little time to take a look at either the very broad or the very narrow of the Valkyries’ early-season story.
Let’s focus first on the narrow.
Left corner best corner
Do teams on the West Coast, the “left” side of America, prefer the spatial symbolism of shooting from the left corner?
That’s obviously ridiculous—because almost every team in the WNBA prefers to shoot from the left corner.
Only Los Angeles and Minnesota take more of their corner threes from the right than from the left, and most teams show a noticeable favoritism for the left corner over the right.
Why is this? Why does Golden State embrace the trend so wholeheartedly? I don’t know. Considering the fact that the Valkyries shoot 20% from the left corner and 0% from the right corner (regression the mean alert), this is a good thing, but it also doesn’t mean much. The average WNBA team actually shoots better from the right corner than the left corner (7 of 13 teams make a higher % from the right than left), but these are not statistically significant considering the small sample size.
It really is a small sample size, because the WNBA’s data output is very conservative about what constitutes a “corner three.” This, for example, is not a corner three to WNBA.com:
(I should also note that there’s probably an arena-specific scorer’s effect at play on threes, among other influences, but I’m not going to get into that now, because even the small imperfect sample size is intriguing.)
I chose a Kayla Thornton example very consciously. Thornton is leading the WNBA in left corner threes—and corner threes from either location—with 12 (she has just 3 “official” attempts from the right corner). Her 1.33 left corner threes per game is on pace to set a record, as far as I can tell. It shouldn’t be a surprise: she finished second in total left corner threes in 2024 with 22, and now getting more minutes and more shots in Golden State, she’s on pace to eclipse that mark very comfortably.
There’s plenty that goes into this. Golden State loves to shoot threes; Thornton, by virtue of being on the court more than any other Valkyries, naturally takes a commensurate amount. Anyone who watches the Valkyries play can see that KT likes to spot up in the left corner.
But I think there are some small features that contribute to her relatively dramatic rate from the left corner. Most defenses will, at some point in time—and for plenty of teams, at most points in time—send their low defender as the helper against paint threats. The Valkyries have two point guards who are very good at skipping passes to the corner against that rotation (Julie Vanloo simply specializes in it):
(I wonder if a prevalence of right-handed passers and players overall have something to do with the left-corner preference vis a vis these skip pass looks—righties can get more oomph on their skips to the left corner when driving downhill. When I find a data set of player handedness, I’ll follow up.)
When defenses help out of the corner on the fly and don’t rotate, no one is better positioned to take advantage than the player who likes to spot up in the vacated corner:
Furthermore, Golden State plays a lot of small-ball lineups with no more than one traditional big. My sense is that KT has logged a lot of minutes at the 4 in those looks—or at least taking the 4’s matchups—which sometimes nets her the corresponding power forward matchup on defense, especially when teams are loathe to stick a slow defender on Janelle Salaün. Those power forwards (really, the offball bigs), now likelier to be guarding KT, are the likely helpers in the paint, which facilitates the corner kickout to beat the help:
The double-big Sparks (Dearica Hamby helping off the strongside twice and once off the weakside in the fake corner three clip, Azurá Stevens in a help clip) were particularly susceptible.
Golden State would obviously like to see Thornton shoot better than 25% from the left corner, with so many looks, but three-point shooting is a much larger question for the team as a whole.
Stepping up the usage
Another popular talking point about the Valkyries has been everyone on the expansion roster stepping up compared to their previous stop. Here’s how that looks in terms of usage rate:
Only Vanloo and Cecilia Zandalasini have lower usage rates than they did in 2024, when Vanlook was a starter for the Washington Mystics and Zandalasini’s was 0.8% higher.
Everyone else’s is higher or much higher, especially Thornton as discussed above. Some of that has to do with lineup shuffling and rotations (Hayes and Leite have gotten big minutes when they’ve played, but they don’t always play, for different reasons). Some of that has to do with everyone stepping up.
Eurobasket
Everyone is talking about Eurobasket. If you’re reading this, you probably already know that the Valkyries are losing Vanloo, Salaün, Zandalasini, and Temi Fágbénlé (otherwise known as 40% of their minutes) to Eurobasket for at least the group stage. If you don’t, and also didn’t hear that Golden State re-signed preseason favorite Laeticia Amihere and Aerial Powers, you can find everything you need to know here:
Eric Apricot at Valkyrie Nation has a great comprehensive resource
You can (and should) read Marisa Ingemi in the San Francisco Chronicle as usual
The Valkyries have some stuff up on their website
Golden State next plays on Saturday against Seattle, the only team from which they did not take a player in the expansion draft.
Great post. Thanks for posting on Bluesky