SAN FRANCISCO — Golden State shot 37.5%. That’s a bad shooting percentage in almost any game, and it was their second-best field goal percentage of the entire WNBA Finals; it was enough to make them champions.
It was an ugly, gritty Game 7 win for the Golden State Valkyries, who used every part of their undervalued, overlooked mentality to win 68-63 and beat the Atlanta Dream for a championship in just their second year as a franchise.
It was Valkyries basketball. They did it their way.
“It’s very cliché,” said Kayla Thornton, “But defense does win championships.”
Confetti and tears streamed as the Valkyries celebrated their title. F-bombs flew from head coach Natalie Nakase, the scent of champagne was inescapable, and the love that Nakase insisted wins all postseason actually did.
“I definitely lost that thinking about what’s the next thing, what’s the next thing, but sometimes the best thing is what’s right in front of you, people who you love,” said Gabby Williams, who exploded for 30 points and took Finals MVP. “That’s what got me going tonight and what got me going all season.
“I showed up new to the team, the team already had a culture and relationships established, but I walked into a group full of love, and that just changed the entire trajectory of my career.”
All season long, the Valkyries were insistent about who they were. They were a team that was going to win on defense, and if they scored along the way, that was fine, too.
But even when they shot 3-for-14 in the second quarter or went nearly six minutes without a basket, they kept with who they were. They forced 12 turnovers and stopped the Dream from getting hot as they had in Game 6, stalling any Atlanta momentum and never letting it lead by more than 9 points.
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The Dream lost every finals game in which they scored fewer than 70 points. That was also the magic number for the Valkyries in the regular season, who lost just once all season when giving up less than 70, an early loss when Chicago scored 69 points.
Against Atlanta, the Valkyries faced their match in a team that could give just as much defensively but often had a little more on offense. But Golden State never deviated from its plan to simply outwill the Dream.
“You pray for these moments,” said point guard Veronica Burton. “I prayed so much for this moment. Not necessarily even to just win, but like to see it all pan out, to trust the process of it. So yeah, it’s pain. It’s part of it. It’s a physical game. It’s a dogfight. Both teams want it, and yeah, it’s physical. You take hits.”
The Valkyries almost never had the best offense in a win. Even when they shot 47% in Game 2 against Dallas, Williams was disappointed, noting there was nothing positive to take from scoring 100 points if they gave up 108.
After giving up 32 first-quarter points to Atlanta in Game 6, Nakase said the Valkyries would punch first on Saturday, that it was “non-negotiable.” They did that, but it still took a comeback after the Dream went on a run in the second quarter.
It’s nothing the Valkyries hadn’t survived before.
On Saturday, the Valkyries trailed by as much as 9 in the second half in front of an unwavering “Boohalla” crowd that showed up in costume ready to cheer on their team.
“I wasn’t gonna lose on Halloween,” Williams told USA Network in her Finals MVP interview.
Williams certainly wasn’t. Her explosive second-half performance nearly blew the roof off of Chase Center as she hit three consecutive 3-pointers in the third quarter to surge Golden State’s comeback.
That came after she scored just 2 points in the entire first half.
“At halftime, Gabby was like, ‘I just got to get going, and we’re good,’ and she clearly did that,” said Veronica Burton, who finished with a double-double (10 points, 10 rebounds) on Saturday. “And of course, like once we were rolling, it was over with. Honestly. Yeah, that’s what she said at halftime. And it was like, what can we do? What do you want me to call? What can I do? And it was when she entered a different moment.”
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Throughout the postseason, Valkyries fielded questions essentially asking how they were good enough to get to the semifinals or finals. They became the first WNBA championship team to win without a single All-WNBA player.
“It just shows, like, you should just never give up on yourself,” said guard Kaila Charles. “Continue believing in your dreams, and keep working afterwards.”
For so long, this has been a team defined by role players getting a chance to step up, or players who were not believed in. It was a group picked by ESPN to finish 10th in the WNBA standings, a year after making the playoffs as an expansion team.
They became a WNBA championship team without sacrificing a single thing about who they wanted to be.
“We were making jokes, like I can’t wait to win and shut everybody up,” Williams said. “I don’t want to focus on that. I want to focus on people who believed in myself the whole time. There was obviously a lot of negativity, but tonight I want to focus on the positive.
“There were a lot of people that believed in us and believed in me as well. It started with us believing in each other, and that’s so special.”
