With Shades of Early Warriors, Golden State Valkyries Head to Finals in Second Season
At the start of the dynasty years in the 2014-2015 NBA season, the Golden State Warriors weren’t considered by most in the basketball world to be a serious contender. Even as they ripped off a 65-17 record and led the league in defensive rating while posting the second-best offensive rating, the consensus was that their small-ball lineups would get crushed by grittier playoff-level defenses. They were supposed to lose to James Harden, who some thought was snubbed when Steph Curry won the MVP award over him, and to LeBron James and the Cavaliers, a team heralded by James’s return from the Heat the offseason before. They weren’t supposed to win it all.
They weren’t supposed to. But they did. And now their sister WNBA franchise, the Golden State Valkyries, are poised to prove people wrong the same way.
The second-year expansion franchise had a good inaugural season last year, making the playoffs as the new team on the block and over-shot expectations in doing so. It’s not easy to win as a new team without the standing reputation and resources of others, but the Valkyries made due. This year, however, they made it clear what their goal was, and have now reached it in going to the WNBA Finals.
The Valks didn’t generate their successes exactly like their counterparts in the Warriors. They were a relatively middle-of-the-pack shooting team without a clear-cut number-one star this past regular season: Leading scorer Gabby Williams took a leap to a career year scoring-wise, but the load-bearing in the offense was really based on whoever was feeling it that night when it came to getting the buckets. Much like the Warriors, however, they did move the ball around plenty on the way to being 5th in assist percentage: Guard and net-rating leader Veronica Burton was the only player on the team to average over 3 assists per game, but was one of 10 who dished out at least 1 each contest regularly, emblematic of the buy-in.
What defined the team’s success - and shows the most in similarity to the Dubs - was largely their defense, which posted a league-best defensive rating of 99.1. It was a full 4 points better than the runner-up Washington Mystics at 103.3, and was a major contributor in them leading the league in net rating despite ranking 7th in offense. Defensive savants Kiah Stokes, Kayla Thornton, and Cecilia Zandalasini led the charge in putting teams in ‘Valkatraz’ as the team’s leaders in defensive rating amongst players playing over 15 minutes a game, and their combined efforts led to ranking 1st in opponent EFG% and 2nd in opponent turnover percentage. The aforementioned Burton and Williams shared the 4th-place spot league-wide in steals per game at 1.6, while Stokes put up 1.7 blocks per game to shore up the stats.
Aside from the defense, the Valkyries did the little things incredibly well: They took care of the ball on their own (3rd in turnover percentage) and crashed the boards for second-chance points (4th in offensive rebounding percentage) regularly. WNBA Coach of the Year snub Natalie Nakase clearly instilled a high level of discipline into this team, and that combined with the buy-in from the players paid dividends with their successes so far. And while their offensive identity was largely by committee and not defined neatly by their shooting, players like Kaitlyn Chen (60% true shooting) and Janelle Salaun (58% true shooting) were able to punish teams consistently when left to it.
One of the most poignant similarities between the Valkyries and the early Warriors, however, is their home-court advantage: Throughout their sweep of the Aces, the Valks crowd in the Chase Center - affectionately and cleverly nicknamed ‘Balhalla’ - was reminiscent of Oracle Arena when it comes to crowd volume and engagement. A number of attendees cited it as one of the loudest environments they’d ever been in sports-wise; High praise, but not entirely unexpected for a team that was regularly selling out the arena all season long. That distinct advantage, and the number of fans they seem to have aggregated on the road, has been with them all season, and the team has capitalized on it by matching that energy whenever they take the floor.
The Valks move on now to face the Atlanta Dream in the WNBA Finals. They’ll look to roll their convincing series wins against the Dallas Wings and the title-favorite Aces over into taking home the trophy, and much like the Warriors, will seek to prove everyone just how wrong they were for counting them out or calling their success a fluke all season long.