The Golden State Valkyries won their first WNBA title on Saturday night. They beat the Atlanta Dream 68-63 in Game 7 at Chase Center in San Francisco. It was the first Game 7 in WNBA Finals history, in the franchise’s second season, ESPN’s Alexa Philippou reported.
Gabby Williams, the Finals MVP, scored 30 points, 28 of them in the second half. According to ESPN, that is the most points anyone has scored in a single half of a WNBA postseason game.
Citing the Elias Sports Bureau, ESPN reported that the Valkyries are only the third team to win a title within two seasons. That count covers the NBA, its predecessor the BAA, and the WNBA. They also became the first WNBA champion without a single All-WNBA player. That second fact explains most of how they did it.
Williams had 2 points at halftime and 30 at the end
Atlanta led 30-24 at the break, and Williams had 2 points on 1-of-4 shooting, NBC Sports reported. In the third quarter she scored 15 points by herself, more than the Dream scored as a team in that period, according to ESPN.
Her run included 15 straight Golden State points across the third and fourth quarters. Per Elias, no WNBA player had done that in a Finals game before, ESPN reported. She finished 10-for-23 from the field, 4-for-8 from three and 6-for-6 at the line, with four blocks and two steals.
The game was tied at 55 with just under three minutes left. Williams hit a three and two free throws to start a 7-0 run, the Valkyries’ own game recap said. Veronica Burton sealed it with two free throws with 5.1 seconds left, NBC Sports and the Associated Press reported.
“Gabby is our closer,” coach Natalie Nakase said afterward, adding that Williams “stayed patient,” AP reported. Williams answered the doubters on the USA Network broadcast. “All we heard last year, ‘We don’t have no stars, we don’t have no talent.’ Yeah, right,” she said, according to ESPN.
Kiah Stokes, another free-agent signing, added 13 rebounds. She finished the series with 19 blocks, a Finals record, the team said. Jordin Canada led Atlanta with 18 points, and Angel Reese had 8 points and 12 rebounds, AP reported. It was Atlanta’s fourth Finals loss in franchise history.
The expansion draft gave Golden State a cheap, deep roster
The WNBA gave the Bay Area team to Warriors owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber on Oct. 5, 2023, CBS News and AP reported. Lacob guaranteed a title within the first five years, according to AP. It took two.
The first roster came from an expansion draft in December 2024. Each existing team could protect six players, and Golden State could take one unprotected player from each of the other 12 clubs. It could select only one player who was about to become an unrestricted free agent, AP explained before the draft.
General manager Ohemaa Nyanin and Nakase took 11 players, seven of them from outside the United States, ESPN’s Kendra Andrews reported. Three of those picks played roles in the Finals: Burton, taken from Connecticut, Kayla Thornton from New York and Cecilia Zandalasini from Minnesota.
Burton is the clearest case of how this worked. Dallas drafted her in the 2022 lottery and cut her after two seasons, NBC Sports reported. In Golden State she won the league’s Most Improved Player award in 2025.
That first season went better than any expansion team’s had. The Valkyries went 23-21, the most wins ever by a first-year expansion team.
As the No. 8 seed, they were swept by the top-seeded Minnesota Lynx in the first round, CBS Sports’ Jack Maloney wrote. Nakase was named Coach of the Year.
Keeping the core, then one big free-agent signing
The bigger risk came last spring. Two more expansion teams, Portland and Toronto, held their own draft. Only two of Golden State’s inaugural players were still under contract, The San Francisco Standard reported in March. Carla Leite went to Portland, and Maria Conde and Temi Fagbenle went to Toronto, according to the team’s offseason tracker.
Golden State re-signed most of the rest. Burton agreed to a multiyear deal on April 11, followed by Rupert, Janelle Salaün, Kaila Charles, Zandalasini, Thornton and Tiffany Hayes, the tracker shows. The Standard counted nine returning players by the Finals, the most in the league.
Then came Williams. She signed a multiyear deal on April 12, the second day of free agency, AP’s Doug Feinberg reported. With Seattle the year before, she averaged a career-high 11.6 points and led the league with 2.3 steals a game. She also made her first All-Star team and the All-Defensive First Team.
“For a player of Gabby’s caliber to choose us in just our second year … means everything,” Nyanin said at the time. Lacob had recruited her personally, ESPN reported. Stokes, who had won three titles with Las Vegas, signed the next day.
Williams was a defender first. Her career scoring average is under 10 points a game, ESPN noted. Golden State paid for her defense and got a Finals scorer, too.
Nakase built around depth, not a star
Nakase worked her way up with the Los Angeles Clippers from 2012 to 2022, the Standard reported last month. She then spent two seasons as Becky Hammon’s assistant in Las Vegas, where the Aces won two titles.
She told the paper she could not copy the Aces’ model because she did not have players like A’ja Wilson and Jackie Young. “I can’t take everything then pour it into GSV,” she said. Instead, the Valkyries won 32 regular-season games, took the No. 2 seed and set a WNBA record for bench scoring, according to the Standard.
Nakase adjusted in the Finals, too. After Golden State fell behind 2-1, she moved Charles and Hayes into the starting lineup and sent Thornton and Zandalasini to the bench, AP reported. Hayes, 37, came out of retirement two years ago after 10 seasons with Atlanta. She scored 11 points in Game 7.
What this means for the NBA’s own expansion
The title lands as the NBA weighs expansion of its own. On March 25, its Board of Governors voted to formally explore bids for Seattle and Las Vegas, Reuters reported. Both teams would start play in the 2028-29 season, and bids are expected to run $7 billion to $10 billion per team.
That vote did not guarantee either team. A second vote to finalize expansion needs 23 of the 30 governors, Front Office Sports reported.
The Valkyries’ path would be hard to copy in a bigger league. WNBA rosters are small, and a single defensive stopper plus a deep bench can swing a series.
Still, the lesson for any expansion front office is to find players other teams undervalued, then keep them together. Milwaukee made a similar case in baseball last week, winning the World Series on a 19th-ranked payroll. Our preview of that World Series laid out how the two finalists’ combined payrolls came in below the Dodgers’.
The Valkyries have sold out every game in their history, including 53 in a row through Game 7, the team said.
Their championship parade runs along the Embarcadero in San Francisco on Wednesday, Nov. 4, from noon to 2 p.m.
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