Julie Vanloo had an amazing weekend. She led Belgium to the EuroBasket championship.
And then on Monday, that positive emotion all got thrown away.
Vanloo skipped celebrations to make sure she could get back to San Francisco to return to play for the Golden State Valkyries. Based on her social media posts, Vanloo flew for about 18 hours from Athens, Greece to the Bay Area.
But the Valkyries cut her. Vanloo's Instagram post suggested that she may have learned of the news almost immediately upon the plane's landing.
“Literally just touched down in the bay,” Vanloo wrote alongside a broken heart emoji. “I need some time to process all of this man and put my feelings into words. I can’t right now.”
The Valkyries are in their first WNBA season, and they had a number of European players on their inaugural roster, knowing that EuroBasket would take them away midseason.
Before Vanloo left, she was averaging 4.6 points and 4.1 assists in 20 minutes per game off the bench.
The Valkyries went 5-2 in Vanloo's absence, utilizing local guard Kaitlyn Chen (most recently of UConn) to help them win games.
Maybe at the core, the Valkyries feel they made the right basketball decision.
It certainly doesn't seem like they made the right human decision, though.
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