ATLANTA — The longest season in WNBA history deserved the longest WNBA Finals ever, and the basketball gods have delivered. Sometimes, good things can happen.
The Golden State Valkyries’ 67-62 win Sunday over the Atlanta Dream in Game 4 was the most recent example. After dropping two consecutive games and looking as if they might go silently into the night, Gabby Williams and Tiffany Hayes decided to remind the WNBA that the Valkyries hadn’t played with their true identity in the previous 80 minutes. Amid a raucous Atlanta crowd, Golden State punctured the Dream’s bubble, guaranteeing the first Game 6 in WNBA Finals history.
Perhaps it should come as no surprise. Despite the tendency to believe that maybe — just maybe — every game in a series indicates what will come next, or that viewers and fans learn some overarching lesson from each result, the WNBA this season consistently reminded us that belief and reality aren’t always aligned. Certainly not in a league that has proven its parity and depth in a year of historic growth, both in terms of expansion and popularity.
Never was the WNBA this wide open. In seven of the last 10 seasons, the eventual WNBA champion won at least 77 percent of its regular-season games. This season, not a single team won at the same rate, and the team with the highest win percentage — the Minnesota Lynx (75 percent) — got swept by the New York Liberty in the first round.
Nearly half the league had a compelling argument for why they might be the best this year, why they might be the ones hoisting the trophy at the close of the season.
Minnesota had the best regular-season record. New York won the Commissioner’s Cup. The Las Vegas Aces were the reigning champs in three of the last four seasons. The Indiana Fever had the best offense. In previous years, that might be enough to predict the eventual champ. But stopping there wouldn’t include either team that gutted their way to the finals.
This year, Golden State had the best net rating. And no team showed more improvement from the beginning to the end of the season than the Dream. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that these are the last two standing. Balance and growth are the hallmarks of the Valkyries and Dream, and in a season of parity, those factors helped separate them from the pack.
Now, as the series marches on to Monday’s Game 5 in San Francisco, both teams will attempt to grow and find balance through the final three games of this best-of-seven series. Golden State coach Natalie Nakase, whose career began in the NBA, where seven-game series are more common (that length was introduced for last season’s finals, in which the Aces swept the Phoenix Mercury), said consistency is the key to success in these longer series.
“Stay consistent in your rest and recovery,” Nakase said. “Block out the noise. Understand the game plan. There’s going to be adjustments. Lock in, and be ready to fight.”
Neither team has been especially consistent in this series. But good teams establish their identities; great teams’ identities warp opponents. And both Atlanta and Golden State have proven, after surviving the regular season and postseason grind, that they are great teams.
In Game 1, Golden State established home-court dominance and took care of the ball, limiting Atlanta’s ability to capitalize on opponents’ errors (self-inflicted or otherwise). Assuming, after that game, that the Valkyries might skate to history in their second year of existence might not have seemed overly reactive.
But in Games 2 and 3, the Dream flipped the script as Angel Reese exerted her dominance, and the Valkyries, with their vaunted defense, had no answers. That was, until the teams hit the floor in Atlanta for Game 4, and the Valkyries refused to let anything come even remotely easily to Reese and, eventually, evened the series as it heads back West.
“Before the game, I just talked to the team about just not having regrets,” Williams said. “The beauty of our sport is (that) as bad as we felt on Wednesday, we get to turn around and make it right today.”
Williams’ words might also be comforting for Atlanta, which is surely feeling some regrets after finishing its two-game homestand with split results. As to what her team needs to do before Monday, Reese said, “As long as we stay together and get back to our identity, we’ll be fine.”
Reese didn’t seem rattled by her or her team’s performance Saturday. It’s a long series, and these teams expected as much. There’s no use wasting energy on regrets.
How either team will separate itself over the remaining games is still to be determined. How Nakase and Atlanta coach Karl Smesko will adjust and tinker will show itself. But the only true takeaway is that anyone who thinks they know what will happen hasn’t learned much from this season — or postseason.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Atlanta Dream, Golden State Valkyries, WNBA
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