OAKLAND — On the night of the WNBA draft, Kaitlyn Chen sat inside The Shed arts center in New York City expecting nothing more than to cheer on her UConn teammates as they were called to the podium.
Little did Chen know that by the end of the night, she would hear her own name called.
To Chen’s surprise, the Golden State Valkyries selected her 30th overall in the third round.
As her name flashed on screens all over the auditorium, Chen was mobbed by her college teammates. UConn star and the draft’s top overall draft pick Paige Bueckers made a beeline to Chen, stopping an autograph session to congratulate her college teammate.
The moment was the perfect encapsulation of the type of player Chen is.
“It was pretty incredible, especially to be able to experience that with my teammates there with me made it that much better,” Chen told the Bay Area News Group.
While getting drafted is a once-in-a-lifetime accomplishment, Chen’s spot on the Valkyries’ roster is not guaranteed.
The 5-foot-9 point guard – the first player of Taiwanese descent to be drafted into the WNBA – is facing an uphill battle to make it out of training camp with a roster spot. In the last five drafts, there have been 60 third-round selections, and of that group, only 16 have played in a WNBA game. The Valkyries current roster has a number of veteran guards who Chen would need to beat out to make the team.
If she does, it probably won’t be hard to see why.
“She makes the right play at the right time, without any selfish motives,” said Doc Scheppler, Chen’s shooting coach and the longtime girls basketball coach at Pinewood High School in Los Altos Hills. “She’s just a winning basketball player. I think basketball purists would understand exactly what I mean by that. She makes winning plays.”
A daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, Chen gravitated toward basketball as a young girl growing up in Southern California. Lakers games were always on TV in the…
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