With a trip to the WNBA Finals on the line, Veronica Burton pulled her teammates in close in the huddle.
“This is our time,” Burton preached as the Valkyries stepped onto the court for an overtime period in Las Vegas. “This is it.”
It was a message they took to heart. Golden State outscored the reigning champion Aces 16-6 in overtime to win 87-77 and complete the semifinal sweep nobody saw coming.
“This is a dream come true to be going to a Finals in our second year,” coach Natalie Nakase said after the Game 3 comeback.
Gabby Williams scored eight overtime points, eight Valkyries players scored at least six points, and after Aces star Jackie Young hit a game-tying jumper with under a minute in regulation, the Valkyries needed an extra five minutes to find a new gear and put the Aces away.
When Joe Lacob hired Nakase and GM Ohemaa Nyanin to build the Golden State Valkyries, he gave them the same mandate he issued to the Warriors after buying the franchise in 2010: Win a championship within five years.
It sounded ridiculous at the time. Then Nyanin and Nakase assembled a roster so deep that it shattered expectations and vaulted toward the top of the WNBA.
“It feels special because this is a special group, honestly,” Williams said. “We ‘bout to have some bandwagoners ‘cause we ain’t get no love all season. Nobody believed in us but it honestly made us smile — all we need is each other. We just need to believe in each other.”
Williams scored just eight points in regulation, but the Valkyries’ marquee offseason addition was automatic in the extra period as she consistently drove to the basket and secured two crucial steals. Kayla Thornton, the Valkyries’ lone 2025 All-Star, led the team with 18 points and hit Golden State’s final two free throws with under 30 seconds remaining to seal the win.
After Chelsea Gray and the Aces built a nine-point advantage at the half, the Valkyries responded with a 17-0 run to open the third quarter, as Kaitlyn Chen’s 4-foot jumper gave Golden State its first lead of the night with 3:25 to play in the third.
Tiffany Hayes, who repeatedly got downhill to her left side to get up and through the Aces’ bigs in the paint, was a key architect of the comeback. Thornton and Kiah Stokes each hit timely triples as the Valkyries’ defense swarmed the Aces on the other end to force 12 straight missed shots. Williams, who played just 28 minutes, watched much of the swing from the bench.
“I wasn’t worried at all,” Williams said. “I wasn’t worried about missing shots because I knew [Hayes], [Cecilia Zandalasini], [Stokes] got it. Someone else has it.”
The Valkyries trailed by two points with less than two minutes remaining, but Williams took the game over. Matched up against five-time MVP A’ja Wilson on the low post, Williams came up with a steal and raced the other way. She hit Thornton on a bounce pass, and Thornton tied the game at 69 with a contested finish.
“It feels incredible,” an emotional Burton said in the tunnel after the game. “This is a dream come true. But we’re not done yet.”
3 days ago
5 days ago
Thursday, Oct. 1
As the buzzer sounded and a sizable traveling crowd of Valkyries fans erupted, Lacob was on his feet applauding while Nyanin and team president Jess Smith wrapped their arms around one another on the baseline.
Lacob’s Warriors needed five years to win a title after Lacob bought the team. The Valkyries, in their second season and fresh off a dominant semifinal series, are threatening to beat that timeline.
Led by Williams, Burton, and a rotation that goes 10 deep, the Valkyries have an answer for every problem. Golden State now has home-court advantage and a raucous crowd waiting for the Atlanta Dream at Chase Center.
The Aces, the No. 3 seed, at least expected to extend the series. Las Vegas is a modern dynasty, and Wilson, Gray, and Young are superstars who know what it takes to win in October. The Valkyries — while able to lean on veterans including Thornton, Stokes, and Hayes — are still in the early stages of authoring their history.
But in Sunday’s 71-60 Game 1 win, Golden State made the top dog look like the newcomer. Williams poured in 25 points, grabbed 11 rebounds, and dished out five assists, while the Valkyries turned the game into a defensive slog that the Aces — a bit depleted and looking worn out — never solved. The Aces’ 60 points were a season low.
In Game 2, Golden State built a 17-point lead, then watched it disappear. The Valkyries trailed late before Williams hit a game-tying jumper. Then Burton, who had a quiet Game 1 and had been off her mark offensively through the first three quarters of Game 2, stepped into the moment — burying a go-ahead 3-pointer with 41 seconds left to put Golden State in front for good in an 83-81 win. Before the stars took over, Hayes’ 21 points helped the Valkyries build an early cushion. It was a close call, though Golden State was considerably more composed in the waning moments than it was in the wonderfully chaotic crunch-time scenes during the first-round series against the Dallas Wings.
“Game 2 in Dallas was huge for us from a learning perspective,” Burton said. “When there’s a score like that, that’s not our game and we need to dictate the pace.”
The franchise, too, has been collecting milestones off the court. CNBC valued the Valkyries at $1 billion in June, making them the first women’s sports organization to reach that mark — though Lacob has said that valuation is on the low end. According to Sportico, the team has topped $100 million in annual revenue, also the first women’s sports franchise to do so.
“I think everyone that’s a part of this team, player or not, understands the impact that we’re making — by being this powerful, being this fun, being this inclusive, what that’s showing the world is it’s great business in growing the game of basketball and creating a better tomorrow for young women,” Smith told The Standard in June.
Now, the Valkyries have a week off and will return to Chase Center — where they went 17-5 in the regular season and are 4-0 in the playoffs — for Game 1 against the Dream on Saturday, Oct. 17. Lacob’s goal once seemed so far-fetched it felt like a dare. After all, there are several franchises that have been around for decades longer than the Valkyries and have produced only a couple of Finals appearances.
Two years later, that dare has become a countdown. Four wins stand between Golden State and a title, and the franchise that was supposed to be building toward a distant future has arrived ahead of schedule.
“To be here in this moment, we’re making history,” Burton said. “This is unimaginable. For us, it’s so realistic and it’s what we expected. It’s what we worked toward. It’s what we believed in the entire year.”