SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 If you wanted artistry in the city Friday, you should\u2019ve gone to the opera or a museum.<\/p>\n
Because what the Golden State Valkyries put on the Chase Center hardwood can\u2019t be called beautiful basketball. No, it was more akin to a mugging with a box score.<\/p>\n
But it worked.<\/p>\n
Down 16 in the second half, unable to throw a pebble into the bay, and possessing a half-court offense that left fans wondering if the team in purple could see the basket, Golden State clawed out an improbable, gutsy and yet altogether deserved 77-73 Game 3 win over the Dallas Wings anyway.<\/p>\n
They didn\u2019t survive this first-round series.<\/p>\n
No, they laughed in the face of their shortcomings. They conquered it with pure, concentrated, uncut effort.<\/p>\n
They were so intense that their head coach Natalie Nakase \u2014 a true leader in the field of intensity \u2014 collapsed on the sidelines in crunch time. (She finished the game and was deemed \u201cfine\u201d after the contest.)<\/p>\n
It\u2019s such a cliche to say that one team \u201cwanted it more.\u201d<\/p>\n
But what other analysis can you provide on a Valkyries win like Friday\u2019s?<\/p>\n
This team doesn\u2019t know any path forward except through.<\/p>\n
And now they\u2019re through to the WNBA semifinals \u2014 the final four \u2014 in only their second year of existence.<\/p>\n
How\u2019d they do it?<\/p>\n
On Friday, there wasn\u2019t a storybook shot at the buzzer or a brilliant final-minute run of two-way execution.<\/p>\n
No, the Valkyries dragged Dallas down into the muck, had their fans use every bit of oxygen in the building, and then beat the Wings over the head with the rulebook.<\/p>\n
The fourth quarter wasn\u2019t a showcase; it was an alley fight with an orange ball.<\/p>\n
It featured five \u2014 count \u2019em, five \u2014 jump balls.<\/p>\n
But these Valks are well-trained, seasoned, calloused in that kind of combat. They\u2019ve prepared all season for it. No, make that all of their short existence.<\/p>\n
By the final buzzer, the Wings didn\u2019t look like a playoff team; they looked like shell-shocked survivors scanning the concourse for the nearest emergency exit.<\/p>\n
The Memphis Grizzlies once bragged about \u201cGrit and Grind.\u201d<\/p>\n
These Valkyries \u2014 to a woman \u2014 make Tony Allen look like a ballroom dancer.<\/p>\n
Golden State\u2019s last field goal dropped through the net with 1:17 remaining Friday; it gave them a 73-72 lead.<\/p>\n
It was the final field goal anyone scored all night.<\/p>\n
For the next 77 seconds, the Valkyries slammed the vault shut and swallowed the key.<\/p>\n
And how fitting that the definitive, winning play of the game won\u2019t show up on a social media sizzle reel. I\u2019m not even sure it\u2019s reflected in the box score.<\/p>\n
No, it was Gabby Williams re-establishing her foot inbounds by a millisecond and a millimeter to snag a loose-ball rebound, giving the Valks another possession with only 12 seconds on the clock, up one.<\/p>\n
Of course it was a hustle play.<\/p>\n
And of course the final moments of this young team\u2019s favorite moment included a ton of intentional fouls.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the only surprise was that Williams \u00a0\u2014 who famously called herself a choker after critical missed free throws in a similar situation earlier this season against fellow final four qualifier Atlanta \u2014 stepped to the stripe, sank four straight free throws without incident, and put the final nail in Dallas\u2019 coffin.<\/p>\n
Yes, it was all so fitting for a team that treats forced turnovers like the final score of the game; a team that takes borderline sadistic pleasure in making their opponents\u2019 lungs burn so much they want to tap out.<\/p>\n
Between the second and third quarter Friday, the Valks went more than seven continuous minutes of game action without a single made basket.<\/p>\n
Normal teams, faced with a lid on the basket that tight, start daydreaming about flights to Cabo and wondering how many packing boxes they\u2019ll need to clear out their lockers.<\/p>\n
Not these maniacs.<\/p>\n
They responded, eventually, (mercifully?) with a furious 14-0 blitz that nearly blew the roof of Chase Center into orbit.<\/p>\n
Yes, Dallas punched back; they have three certified bucket getters, but Golden State closed the fourth quarter on an 8-0 haymaker.<\/p>\n
Almost literally, I should note.<\/p>\n
The Valks aggregated every unglamorous habit that separates winners from their peers: floor burns, drawn charges, eager scrums and an unmatched sonic hostility from an unmatched home crowd. And they did those things with a near-feral repetition that shooting percentages for either team ceased to matter.<\/p>\n
It might matter moving forward, though.<\/p>\n
This is the big-girls party, now \u2014 where the carnival gets genuinely terrifying.<\/p>\n
Waiting in the semifinals is A\u2019ja Wilson, the undisputed ruler of planet basketball, and a Las Vegas Aces juggernaut that has treated Golden State like an underqualified sparring partner over these last two seasons.<\/p>\n
The Valks have proven they can play with and beat just about anyone.<\/p>\n
Now they\u2019re meeting their final boss.<\/p>\n
Vegas is 6-1 all-time against the Valks, sweeping all three meetings this year, with two being laughers.<\/p>\n
In just two years, Golden State has built a championship-level culture, championship-level grit and a championship-level defense.<\/p>\n
They possess everything required to hang a banner in the rafters, except for one kind of super important thing:<\/p>\n
For all its heart and positives and winning, this team lacks a singular, cold-blooded bucket-getter when the shot clock is bursting red and the paint is swarmed.<\/p>\n
Against Dallas, desperation, smarts and toughness papered over the cracks. If the Valks couldn\u2019t get baskets, no one was getting baskets. They\u2019d eventually will the ball into the hoop.<\/p>\n
Against Wilson and Becky Hammon\u2019s precision winning machine, you probably can\u2019t force five fourth-quarter jump balls and expect the scoreboard to reward you over the course of a best-of-five series.<\/p>\n
Then again, maybe you can.<\/p>\n
Most teams would discuss this imposing challenge as an opportunity to take their game to a higher level. Surely the Valks will do that, too.<\/p>\n
But the truth they won\u2019t tell you is that they\u2019re, instead, going to look for a new level of basketball Hades in which to drag the three-time champs.<\/p>\n
And I wouldn\u2019t bet against them discovering it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 If you wanted artistry in the city Friday, you should\u2019ve gone to the opera or…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":455324,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1770,102,104,103,32792,13597,3607,117504,154,16318,14422],"class_list":["post-455323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-basketball","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-golden-state-valkyries","tag-inside-sports","tag-latest-headlines","tag-social-alert","tag-sports","tag-sports-columnists","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=455323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455323\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/455324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=455323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=455323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=455323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}