Our semi-regular WNBA Tuesday column returns to take a crack at the league Finals, and we’re proud to say we were nowhere near correct in our September 26 piece that suggested the matchup would be between the Las Vegas Aces and the Minnesota Lynx. The former got swept out in the second round by the Golden State Valkyries, while the latter was swept out of the first round by the New York Liberty. Then, the Liberty themselves were swept out in the second round by the Atlanta Dream. So …
Who had the second seed versus the fourth seed in their WNBA Playoffs bracket? Sit down, we know you did not have it, sir!
All jokes aside, here we are: the next WNBA champion will be a first-time league winner, and that’s cool with us. The Valkyries have home-court advantage and a slight sabermetric margin, so naturally we want to pick Golden State in seven games—with a potential Game 7 being on Halloween Night in San Francisco’s Chase Center. We’re not sure it could get any better than that, as the face value for the WNBA Finals tickets at that venue are around an average of $175 per seat. Yowza!
The Dream may not be at full strength, either, which is something to consider: guard Allisha Gray, the 2017 Rookie of the Year vote winner, missed the last two games of the semifinals and is not feeling 100-percent healthy due to an injured hand. She was second on the Atlanta roster in overall Win Shares this season, and that’s a hard loss for any team to overcome, even if her teammates were able to beat the Liberty twice without her on the floor. You can bet she will play, though, if at all possible.
And that’s important, as the Atlanta roster features five players who carry significant value—with a severe drop off after that. Each of these five players notched between 1,236 and 1,472 minutes this season, with the “sixth woman” being on the court for only 572 minutes. The Dream will ride with their five stalwarts as far as they can; meanwhile, the Valkyries have a roster rotation that runs 10 players deep and has done an amazing job at just wearing out opponents all year long. Contrasts in style.
The two teams played three times this regular season, with all three contests coming within a 12-day period ending on the Fourth of July. Golden State swept the games, by a combined 19 points, winning at home on June 24 and June 26 before emerging victorious on the holiday matchup in Atlanta. We can toss those results out the window: after all, the Aces swept the Valkyries this regular season, and little good that did them in the playoffs. So, we’re not going to put much weight in that now.
What we do see over the 44-game regular season is that slight edge in point differential for Golden State (plus-7.1 to plus-6.8). The Valkyries famously had the No. 1 scoring defense, but the Dream were No. 4 in the league there; conversely, Golden State was the second-lowest scoring team in the WNBA, while Atlanta was the third-highest scoring squad. What’s the old adage? Defense wins championships? We saw this as the Valkyries really limited the No. 2-scoring Aces in the second round. Hmmm.
This is not a homer pick, but a lot of this depends on Gray’s health and the Dream’s ability to withstand the Valkyries’ depth while staying out of foul trouble at the same time. One thing about Golden State that is hard to overcome is that 10-headed Hydra mentality, where on any given night, a number of different Valkyries’ players can step up and do the scoring bits—and just enough of them to eke out victories, while the defense clamps down on almost every team’s offensive superstars, readily.
Certainly, the Atlanta roster is talented, yet we’re also going with Golden State because of their coach: Natalie Nakase won WNBA titles as the top assistant in Las Vegas (2022, 2023) before she took the Valkyries job. She also just out-coached her mentor, Becky Hammon, in the semifinals, in a Darth Vader kind of way. We have been confused by the Golden State players all year, no doubt, but we have never hesitated in pinpointing Nakase as the prime difference maker, and we won’t start now.
Golden State in five (WWLWW).
