The Golden State Valkyries Are Beloved And Ahead Of Schedule

When Golden State Valkyries coach Natalie Nakase sat down with ESPN for an interview shortly after her team’s inaugural season began, the first question she fielded was an obvious one: What were her expectations? Her answer was honest, relatively optimistic, and riddled with coded ways to softly say the unavoidable: The Valks were probably going to lose a lot.

I was with her when she said, “It’s going to take time,” “Let’s just get one percent better every single day,” and “I just want them to play with joy,” because expansion teams never win. Not in basketball, anyway, where individual star talent tends to be the one thing that matters. The last two teams to join the WNBA, Atlanta and Chicago, won four and five games, respectively, in their inaugural efforts. These Valkyries were all but explicitly constructed as a team of seat-warmers, here to give the front office an up-close look before this offseason’s forthcoming free-agent apocalypse. They selected Lithuanian wing Juste Jocyte with their first-ever draft pick, yet she won’t even play until next season. The roster is young, undersized, and extremely European (“I have to learn French is what I’ve learned,” Nakase recently quipped to The Athletic).

And yet, it’s working. The Valkyries are not bullshit, they are 4–5, far more successful than could have been expected. They played both of last year’s Finals participants tough, and they’d have a winning record if not for a late collapse.

I was in the building for their blowout win over the Las Vegas Aces this past weekend, a totally comprehensive win over one of the best teams in the WNBA. Against the two-time champs, the Valkyries showed what makes them special: depth, cohesion, and pressure. Nakase has fielded more lineups than any other team in the WNBA, which she can do because she has 10 players who can all hold their own. For example, French (duh) sensation Carla Leite didn’t see the floor against Vegas, because second-year fan favorite Kate Martin was cooking; two days later, Leite scored 15 off the bench against the Sparks.

Vegas poses questions that only the best teams have been able to consistently answer, yet Nakase schooled her old team. A’ja Wilson was never allowed to get comfortable. The Valkyries would toggle into and out of zone from one possession to the next, and they would switch around their coverages on Wilson, doubling late, early, or sometimes not at all to keep the Aces from ever being able to plan. Chelsea Gray made the most of her homecoming, but Jackie Young and Jewell Loyd were snuffed out by the pressure of Veronica Burton and Kayla Thornton.

Golden State’s half-court offense often looks stagnant, as they don’t have a superstar-level talent that causes a defense problems on her own, but they play smart hoops. The ball stays on the move, allowing them to take more threes than any other team in the WNBA. Sure, yes, they shoot the lowest percentage in the W, but conventional analytics wisdom has centered around three-point volume as an important indicator of offensive health.

Thornton and Burton are at the center of everything, the two-player axis around which Nakase sets her role players into orbit. As Maitreyi predicted, I’ve been totally won over by Burton. She is such a fun player to watch defend at the point of attack, which, for her, is wherever the ball is. She’d pick up Young or Loyd from the second they touched the ball in the backcourt, getting in their face and bugging the hell out of them. Burton is shooting a career-high (great!) 36.8 percent from the field (not great!), but more importantly, she is tossing five assists per contest. Many of those are thrown to Thornton, who is the most capable Valkyrie at both creating and making her own shot. She was incredible in the overtime win against the Sparks last night, hitting a tough runner in traffic to give her team a three-point lead in overtime before nailing the dagger three to ice it.

The most fun thing about watching the Valkyries is not watching them gang rebound at a super high level or marveling at Julie Vanloo’s passing vision, it is the energy around the team. The Aces game was the Valks’ fourth home game and fourth sellout crowd. The place was absolutely rocking on Saturday, the 18,000 fans rising and falling with every shot, clearly giving their team energy to keep swarming. All around the Bay Area, I’ve seen tons of Valkyries merch, and basically everyone in my life, especially those who didn’t watch basketball before this year, has gotten into the team. WNBA basketball just makes sense here.

As much as I would have wanted the region’s franchise to have wound up in Oakland, everyone has gotten behind the Valkyries all the same. Whereas big-time men’s sports can feel exclusionary, the Valks crowd is way more queer-presenting and way less masc-presenting then Warriors crowds, and as such feels totally inclusive. Everyone can be a part of it. Everyone is!

Last week, I watched the team visit the tabula rasa–ass Mercury at my local sports bar with a huge group of fellow Valks fans. We all groaned as the Valkyries blew a late lead, allowing 25-year-old rookie Lexi Held to lead her team on a game-closing 18–1 run. Presumably, as the Valkyries build aggressively this winter, that part of the experience will turn out to have been temporary. But the energy feels permanent.

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