{"id":884116,"date":"2026-10-16T08:00:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T08:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/884116\/"},"modified":"2026-10-16T08:00:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T08:00:10","slug":"valkyries-hosts-atlanta-to-start-wnba-finals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/884116\/","title":{"rendered":"Valkyries hosts Atlanta to start WNBA Finals"},"content":{"rendered":"

Atlanta Dream<\/a> (30-14, 15-5 Eastern Conference) at Golden State Valkyries<\/a> (32-12, 15-8 Western Conference)<\/p>\n

San Francisco; Saturday, 3:30 p.m. EDT<\/p>\n

LINE: Valkyries -2.5; over\/under is 154.5<\/p>\n

WNBA<\/a> FINALS: Valkyries host first series matchup<\/p>\n

BOTTOM LINE: The Golden State Valkyries host the Atlanta Dream to start the WNBA Finals. Golden State went 3-0 against Atlanta during the regular season. The Valkyries won the last regular season meeting 88-83 on July 4. Veronica Burton<\/a> led the Valkyries with 21 points, and Allisha Gray<\/a> led the Dream with 22 points.<\/p>\n

The Valkyries are 17-5 on their home court. Golden State is 3-3 in one-possession games.<\/p>\n

The Dream are 15-7 on the road. Atlanta ranks ninth in the WNBA with 25.0 defensive rebounds per game led by Angel Reese<\/a> averaging 7.3.<\/p>\n

Golden State is shooting 42.2% from the field this season, 4.7 percentage points lower than the 46.9% Atlanta allows to opponents. Atlanta averages 16.2 more points per game (91.3) than Golden State gives up (75.1).<\/p>\n

TOP PERFORMERS: Burton is averaging 12.2 points, 5.7 assists and 1.6 steals for the Valkyries. Gabby Williams<\/a> is averaging 16.7 points over the last 10 games.<\/p>\n

Reese is scoring 16.4 points per game and averaging 12.1 rebounds for the Dream. Rhyne Howard<\/a> is averaging 1.9 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games.<\/p>\n

LAST 10 GAMES: Valkyries: 8-2, averaging 83.2 points, 37.6 rebounds, 17.9 assists, 7.8 steals and 4.3 blocks per game while shooting 40.8% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 76.7 points per game.<\/p>\n

Dream: 10-0, averaging 93.9 points, 34.1 rebounds, 22.1 assists, 10.1 steals and 3.4 blocks per game while shooting 44.8% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 78.5 points.<\/p>\n

INJURIES: Valkyries: Iliana Rupert: out for season (pregnancy).<\/p>\n

Dream: Brionna Jones: out for season (leg), Allisha Gray: day to day (hand).<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Atlanta Dream (30-14, 15-5 Eastern Conference) at Golden State Valkyries (32-12, 15-8 Western Conference) San Francisco; Saturday, 3:30…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":884117,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[4130,3691,3444,230765,4389,4804,18118,99,60207,434,13016],"class_list":["post-884116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-allisha-gray","tag-angel-reese","tag-atlanta-dream","tag-event_preview","tag-gabby-williams","tag-golden-state-valkyries","tag-rhyne-howard","tag-sports","tag-veronica-burton","tag-wnba","tag-womens-national-basketball-association"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=884116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884116\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/884117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=884116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=884116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=884116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}