To quote the iconic Colonel John “Hannibal” Smith of “The A Team”: “I love it when a plan comes together.”
From the beginning, the Golden State Valkyries have had a clear plan. The coach who would lead them. The kind of players they wanted. The style they wanted to play. The expectations of ownership. The embrace of the Bay Area basketball fan base. And it has indeed come together.
Golden State comes out of the All-Star break with a 19-8 record, good for second place in the league standings. They have won nine of 10 games, a nine-game winning streak ended at home last week with a tough loss to Washington.
Deep, defensive-minded and benefitting from the addition of All-Star Gabby Williams to a team-first group, the Valkyries have earned their position among the best teams in the WNBA as the season barrels toward the playoffs.
But the path to the WNBA title runs through a pair of elite teams, some MVP contenders and another upstart.
First-place Minnesota (22-6) have forward Napheesa Collier back on the floor. After sitting out since last fall following surgery on both of her ankles, Collier returned on July 22 against the Seattle Storm to score 24 points with 10 rebounds. Adding Collier, one of the best players in the league (and the world) back to this roster — which already features rookie revelation Olivia Miles, All-Star Natasha Howard and the venerable Kayla McBride — makes the Lynx a very scary team in the second half.
A half game behind Golden State are the defending champion Las Vegas Aces at 18-8. A team with a four-time MVP in A’ja Wilson and a roster of experienced championship-level talent.
At this point, the WNBA title looks like it will run through either or both of those teams.
Do the Valkyries, the league leader in scoring defense (76.4), bench scoring (35.4) and 3-pointers made (256), have everything they need in the final 17 games of the regular-season and then the playoffs to run through either of those teams?
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Let’s look at what the final stretch holds for Golden State:
The schedule: Golden State will play 10 road games over the final stretch, including a nine-day, five-game road trip to Chicago, Minnesota, Connecticut, New York and Portland.
Twelve of their final 17 games will come against teams currently with a sub .500 record, including two games against Toronto, three games against Portland and two games against Los Angeles.
In fact, Golden State will face every one of the seven lowest teams in the current WNBA standings down the stretch.
“Teams are getting better,” said Valkyries coach Natalie Nakase. “They’re going to be better after the break. Everyone is going to be looking at all of their losses and the things they can improve. My staff is already starting to think about what things we can do better. The main thing is we get healthy over the break and prepare for the postseason.
The roadblocks: An Aug. 19 home game against Minnesota will surely be circled on the Valkyries’ calendar as the Lynx are the only team in the WNBA that they have not yet beaten in their 1.5 years of existence. They will play again in Minneapolis on Aug. 24.
The two games these two teams have played so far this season have been decided by a total of nine points. That means the Valkyries are close. But Collier’s return may widen that gap.
Dallas has the same ambitions that the Valkyries harbor in Golden State, to upend the conventional thought about who can win in 2026. Golden State won the first matchup in SF by 11 in mid-June. These teams will play two more times on Aug. 7 in Dallas and on Aug. 17 at Ballhalla, games that will likely figure very big in postseason positioning.
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The realities: Defense can lead to titles in the WNBA. Shots might not fall on a given night, but defense can always show up and the Valkyries have proven themselves there.
The offense is another matter. For all of their depth — and the Valkyries are the best team in the WNBA in bench contributions, riding players such as Janelle Salaun, Kaitlyn Chen and Tiffany Hayes on any given night — the Mystics outscoring the Valks 17-2 in the final minutes of their loss on July 20 showed that a go-to scorer may be the one thing they still need. This team needs someone who can get them a bucket when it matters most.
Will the Aug. 2 trade deadline be an opportunity to get one? Hard to say. The Valkyries are clear that they like who they have, that the roster they’ve constructed gives them the best chance to play the selfless, intense, defensive-minded basketball that is their identity. Would they be willing to disrupt their chemistry for a late-season boost of offense?
Could they get a Kelsey Plum (if she is available) or even a Skylar Diggins? And would they be willing to give up what it takes to get them at the expense of their carefully constructed roster?
More questions than answers. And 17 games to go to get some, starting on Wednesday against the Mercury.
“I’m proud of the way we’ve shown up,” said point guard Veronica Burton. “We’ve competed at home and on the road. We’ve gotten close. We’ve stuck together and I think we have shown just how good of a team we are and how we play true team basketball. We are very deep and we are ready to continue on with that.”
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