SAN FRANCISCO — Picture the images of Gabby Williams ripping the silver medal from around her neck at the FIBA World Cup as she walked off the court earlier this summer, no consolation in coming in France’s second-place finish to the United States.
And now picture Williams — with 2 points at halftime of Game 7 in the WNBA Finals — deciding that there is still no consolation in second place, and being in a position to do something about it.
Williams put on an unforgettable show in the final 20 minutes of this knock-down-drag-out championship series on a rapturous, ear-splitting Halloween Saturday night at Ballhalla, putting the Golden State Valkyries on her back with a record 28 second-half points and leading them to a WNBA championship. In their second season.
The Valkyries 68-63 win over the Atlanta Dream caps one of the most unlikely success stories in modern professional sports history.
This team was a $50 million idea in October of 2023, a glint in the eye of Golden State Warriors owner Joe Lacob and of WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert, who admitted that when she took the job she couldn’t believe there wasn’t already a team in the Bay Area market.
Three years and two WNBA seasons later, the Valkyries are champions, not to mention the most valuable team in the history of women’s sports. And that was before they became the WNBA’s new standard bearer for excellence on Saturday night.
The confetti rained down on another sold-out crowd at the Chase Center as Veronica Burton chucked the ball high over her head and ran into the arms of her teammates. Williams and head coach Natalie Nakase embraced for a long time in the postgame scrum.
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The game was over, and the concourses were empty because nobody was leaving this place or this moment. Williams, about to be announced as the Finals MVP, was pulled for her postgame interview, broadcast on the arena public address system, and she had her hands on her head. It was so loud that she couldn’t hear.
“It was so easy to come to work every single day, and that’s what I came here for,” Williams said. On that first very day, back in 2023, this team didn’t have a name, much less a general manager, a coach, a roster, or a colorway. But Lacob set his expectations anyway.
A title in five years. Turned out he might have been a little coy about what was possible. Of course, he didn’t know then that the Valkyries would have Williams as their centerpiece.
Williams has stealthily become one of the best players in the world, finding her “safe place”, as she has called it, in the Bay Area community where she spent much of her childhood, on a team and with a coach that’s a perfect match for her two-way talents.
In the spirit of Boo-halla, Williams was eerily quiet as the first Game 7 in WNBA history began Saturday. Her first-half line read 1-for-4, 2 points. Four shots did not seem like nearly enough for a player capable of taking over the way that Williams can. So when the second half started, she did too.
Williams scored 28 of Golden State’s 44 points in the second half, hitting four 3-pointers, converting all six free throws, and collecting four blocks and two steals on the defensive end. She finished with 30 points, a league scoring record in a winner-take-all WNBA Finals game.
When Williams exploded, she brought a nervous crowd with her. As if losing was simply never an option.
At halftime, Williams said that Nakase told her to “stay patient.”
“I trust her with my life. I stayed patient,” Williams said. “I trusted her. She said, ‘Stay patient, the game is going to open up for you,’ and it did. It’s what we did all year, just trust each other.”
It was the prospect of that kind of trust that brought Williams to Golden State in the first place.
Lacob was on the phone with Williams last winter as she played overseas in Turkey, making the case that she should join the Valkyries.
“We had an almost hour-long conversation, and I knew when it was over that it was good. We clicked.” Lacob said. “Tonight she was unbelievable; it was legendary…She deserves all the credit in the world.”
With 1:40 to go and Williams headed to the line in a 60-57 game, the crowd was already chanting “Gab-by” and “MVP”. A few nail-biting moments later, Golden State made sports history, and Williams had defined her legacy.
“Gabby is our closer,” Nakase said. “Closing with 30, that’s f—ing incredible. She’s the most valuable player in the world, hands down.”
“I’m very, very proud of her, and I’m just glad that tonight she showed who she really can be because she’s been our leader,” said now four-time WNBA champion Kiah Stokes. “She’s been our offense, like the head of it all season, and for her to just come out tonight, Game 7, do or die and everything on the line, and she showed up and showed out.”
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For Williams, this championship is a validation of a journey from the “defensive specialist” role she played in college at Connecticut, to her emergence as an international star in France while she stayed under-the-radar in the WNBA, to her new status as a go-to scorer and leader for a team that just won the WNBA title.
“We were making jokes, like ‘I can’t wait to win it and shut everybody up,’ but I don’t want to focus on that,” Williams said. “I want to focus on the people who have believed in me the whole time.
“There are a lot of people that believed in us and believed in me as well and it started with us believing in each other and that’s so special. I just walked into a group full of love, and it’s changed the trajectory of my entire career.”
Williams said she was making the drive to the arena Saturday afternoon from her home in Oakland, noticing the Valkyries billboards, the Waymo cars wrapped in violet, the city buildings lit up in team colors.
“I’m stressed, nervous, and I see ‘Go Valks’ everywhere, and all I’m thinking is I can’t lose,” Williams said. “Like this is the moment. This is my time to give it my everything for this community. This is the community I want to play for.”
