We have a surprise addition to the Sunday Surmising miniseries tonight, as we report from the Chase Center in San Francisco on the WNBA. The Golden State Valkyries beat the Indiana Fever on Thursday night here in Ballhalla, and today they went for another big victory against the defending champion Las Vegas Aces. That didn’t work out so well for the home team, and here is what we have to say about it: the Valkyries can shut down Caitlin Clark pretty easily, yet they have no answer for A’ja Wilson.

There it is, and what it means says a lot about more than just the Golden State franchise.

The Valkyries harassed the Indiana Fever guard into her second-worst game of the year (3-for-12 from the floor and five turnovers), but the Las Vegas Aces center had no issues, really, in dominating today’s game with 28 points, 15 rebounds, four assists, and four blocks. As we noted last week, the Valkyries don’t have a lot of depth, and even if they did, it would just be about running wave after wave of helpless defenders against Wilson and her teammates, most of whom might be great on their own.

Golden State prides itself on the defensive effort, as the team still lacks offensive firepower. Yet Wilson and the rest of the Aces shot 48 percent from the floor, and that number was well over 50 percent late in the game before the Aces started forcing unnecessary shots with a huge lead in the fourth quarter. Meanwhile, the Valkyries shot a brutal 9-for-39 from two-point range in this game, despite making 46 percent of their 35 (!) three-point attempts. The score looks a lot closer than the outcome truly was.

So, what to make of a team like Golden State? Well, just like last year, the roster performs in streaks of good and bad, with some occasional great thrown in there. It has the second-best scoring differential so far this year, through eight games, and the 5-3 record is acceptable for now. The Commissioner’s Cup stuff is coming up next, and we will see how the team will respond to this loss. The Valkyries host the expansion Portland Fire on Tuesday night, and the Fire are no joke: Portland is 6-4 so far, thanks to GSV.

That’s right: the Valkyries let Carla Leite get taken in the 2026 expansion draft, and she’s leading the Fire with 15.9 points per game and is second on the team with 5.0 assists per game. Little more than a backup last year with Golden State, she’s showing the capability that motivated the Dallas Wings to take her ninth overall in the 2024 WNBA Draft. Why the Valkyries gave up on her is beyond us, as the team has poor guard depth. But hey, we can’t do this routine with the Golden State front office again and again.

We will see soon if that comes back to haunt the Valkyries in Ballhalla.