ATLANTA (AP) — Golden State has prided itself on its defense all season long. For the second straight WNBA Finals game it failed them.
The Valkyries dropped Game 3 of the championship series 97-71 on Wednesday night and trail 2-1 in the best-of-seven series. A Golden State team which relies on its league-leading defense was left to explain allowing 97 points while Atlanta shot 49.3% from the field.
“I think this game, they wanted it more than us, and that’s not who we are,” said guard Tiffany Hayes. “That’s not who we’ve been and that not how we got here.”
Golden State had only given up that many points once this season — an overtime loss to Dallas in Game 2 of the first round.
Before Wednesday night's game, Valkyries coach Natalie Nakase said she was confident her players would bring better “fight” to Game 3 after the loss to the Dream in Game 2.
"I mean I showed them on film and so they were really like wow like you know it felt like they said that they felt like they’re playing hard but then actually watching it on film they’re like ‘Oh my gosh!’ Like it was really eye-opening.
“And they also love to say, you know, film doesn’t lie. Like they know it, we know it as coaches. And so they took a lot of accountability. So they were just very like, OK, we got it.”
Instead, the Valkyries missed their first eight shots and never led.
Nakase said she her team was “just undisciplined” on defense and questioned if players were struggling with the defensive plan. Nakase said if “something is being a little bit unclear, then that's all of me.”
“We weren’t in our shifts consistently,” Nakase said. “We weren’t communicating. We were kind of just late on certain rotations, which was just uncharacteristic.”
Gabby Williams scored 15 points but made only 5 of 18 shots from the field. Cecilia Zandalasini scored 13 points while making four of six 3-pointers. No other starter scored until the final period, though Hayes had 14 points and Janelle Salaun scored 13 points off the bench.
Williams said if the Valkyries can fix their defense better offense will follow.
“I think sometimes shots don’t fall,” Williams said. “You know, we don’t want to make it about offense. They scored what, 97? ... We have to get back to what works for us. We have to just go back to our defense and not what our offense is going to be.”
Veronica Burton, who averaged 12.2 points while starting every game in the regular season, made only 1 of 7 shots for three points.
“We had a couple lull moments throughout the game," Burton said. "Obviously that third quarter, the comeback, we punched first and then it gets away from us. I think that’s kind of where it happened the most. They go on runs, and we weren’t able to get them back.”
Nakase was smiling as she entered the postgame interview room and said she remains confidence in the Valkyries' chances.
“I feel like this is just a long series,” Nakase said. “We’ve been down before. We’ve come back from games where we’ve been down and so now we just wanna just put it as a longer series. ... So it’s just a longer series if you guys think about it. So we’re resilient. We’ve done it before. They know that.”
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