Sophie Cunningham expected a tight WNBA Finals. Instead, she watched the Atlanta Dream overwhelm the Golden State Valkyries.
“I am shocked by how much Atlanta is winning by,” the Indiana Fever guard said on the latest episode of her podcast, “No Hesitation.” “They’re not just winning, they are kicking complete a**.”
Cunningham broke down the first three games of the best-of-seven series with co-host Drew Hanlen, a basketball skills trainer. Atlanta leads two games to one entering Game 4 on Saturday afternoon at State Farm Arena, after Golden State won the opener and the Dream answered with 14- and 26-point wins.
The show debuted Sept. 10 on The Volume, replacing Cunningham’s previous podcast, “Show Me Something,” and focusing on film study and strategy. On the first episode, she said she felt no show offered “real, honest truth about basketball and strictly basketball.”
“I knew this series was not going to be a skunking type situation. I knew it was going to go back and forth,” Cunningham said.
Cunningham, 30, is coming off her eighth WNBA season, which she played on a one-year deal after tearing her right MCL in August 2025. She shot 43.2% from the 3-point range in 2025, third-best in the league. Her Fever were knocked out in the first round this year by the Las Vegas Aces; the defending champions, Golden State, then swept in the semifinals.
Both Finals teams are chasing a first championship. The Valkyries reached the Finals in only their second season, and the Dream had never won a Finals game in three previous trips before this series.
Slow and steady wins Game 1, then Atlanta hits the gas
Golden State won the opener 68 to 64 at Chase Center on Oct. 17, led by 26 points from Gabby Williams. Atlanta went 2 for 19 from the field in the fourth quarter and did not score over the final 3 minutes, 12 seconds.
Cunningham, who called Golden State the slowest team in the WNBA, said the Valkyries got exactly the game they wanted.
“They want to control the pace. They want to slow down. They want to play half court defense and half court offense,” she said. “Game 1, they were definitely setting the tone with their pace, with their pressure and controlling that.”
The answer, in her view, was obvious. “If you’re really any other team outside of Valkyries, you want to run on them,” Cunningham said. “You want that game pace to be absolutely high because that is not what they like to do.”
Hanlen admitted Game 1 had him leaning Golden State. “After that first game, I was convinced that Golden State was going to kind of run through this series and Atlanta might sneak a game or two,” he said. Of Atlanta’s fourth-quarter shooting, he added, “Again, not a typo, not a misstep. Notice every shot is contested.” Still, he noted the Dream had a late 3-point attempt to win it. “Even though it looks like we got dominated, we still were right in the game,” he said, describing how a Dream fan might see it.
Atlanta ran in Game 2. The Dream won 79 to 65 on Oct. 19 for the first Finals victory in franchise history, scoring 24 points off a season-high 19 Golden State turnovers. Angel Reese had 30 points and 16 rebounds, Rhyne Howard set a Finals record with six steals, Allisha Gray scored 18, and Jordin Canada added 13 points, 10 assists and seven rebounds. Hanlen said the Dream won fast-break points 19 to 0.
Game 3 moved from the Dream’s usual home at Gateway Center Arena, which seats about 3,500, to the Hawks’ State Farm Arena, which holds about 17,000, and sold out. Golden State did not make a field goal for the first 4 minutes, 53 seconds and lost 97 to 71. Reese had 21 points and 12 rebounds as one of five Dream players in double figures, and Atlanta turned 17 turnovers into 22 points.
Hanlen said the series has followed the keys he set out before it began: 3-point shooting, Atlanta’s top scorers, and the battle between full-court and half-court basketball. “The formula is kind of the formula,” he said. “My high school coach had a saying: toughest team wins. And that’s exactly what you’re seeing in this series.”
Atlanta’s defense brings the bark and the bite
For Cunningham, the series comes down to one thing, and it is not shooting.
“Valkyries had one of the best defenses all season long and so did Atlanta,” she said. “What’s sticking out to me is Atlanta’s defense. It’s every single game of the series. Who can step it up even more? Who can be a dog even more? Who can bring that tenacity even more than they did the last game? And honestly, Atlanta has been doing that.”
“We can do all these numbers. We can watch film, but whoever is kicking a** on defense is typically who’s going to win,” Cunningham said. “And I think Atlanta has been proving that point, too.”
She said the pressure in Game 2 pushed Golden State into habits it had avoided all season, pointing to a turnover on a simple pass by Veronica Burton, whom she called one of the league’s best point guards.
“The pressure of Atlanta’s defense was causing the Valkyries to do uncharacteristic things that they haven’t done all year,” Cunningham said. “You got to give Atlanta credit for raising their bar of defensive intensity and making them do stuff that they’re not comfortable with.”
That aggression also explains the free throw gap in Game 2, when Atlanta attempted 35 free throws to Golden State’s 19 and drew complaints online, she said.
“If you’re the aggressor and you’re kind of setting the tone, you kind of have the momentum, naturally, you’re going to get those calls more than the other team,” Cunningham said.
Hanlen walked through the scheme behind it. “They’ve basically turned Golden State into an isolation team,” he said. “They’re not letting them drive and kick. They’re not helping out.” Atlanta now stays attached through Golden State’s ghost screens and starts its help defenders inside before sliding out to shooters, the same approach the hosts recommended before the series.
“Are they listening to our podcast?” Hanlen joked. Describing Atlanta’s plan, he said, “We’re going to make them beat us with hard twos instead of the drive-and-kick dominoes that we saw them dominate with,” and he called it “a big, big compliment to their coaching staff and to their players.”
Cunningham said the credit is shared. “Our coaches, no matter what team you’re on, they spend days on days on days watching film and trying to clip it to help us players be successful, but Atlanta’s actually executing it,” she said. “So, you got to give credit to both.”
“They’re being freaking dogs right now on the defensive end, and they don’t care,” Cunningham said. “They’re playing with reckless abandonment and it’s working for them.”
“Their players are playing, man,” she added. “They have peaked at the right d*** time.”
Give Angel the ball, and nobody gets hurt
The moment Cunningham and Hanlen agreed changed the series came early in Game 2. Reese repeatedly sealed her defender and raised her hand for the ball without getting it, then walked back on defense visibly frustrated and turned toward her bench. Some on social media called her a baby for it.
Cunningham, known for her own fiery edge, made three points in Reese’s defense.
First, she said, frustration comes with the stakes. “You could probably clip almost everybody in the WNBA, in the NBA, that has clips like this, the frustration clips,” Cunningham said. “That’s what you get when you’re playing at a high level, when you’re a competitor, especially when you’re trying to get a championship. This s*** is going to happen.”
Second, she conceded the body language could have been better. “Absolutely,” Cunningham said. “And I think if she watches this back, I think she could have said the same thing.”
Third, she said, sometimes a star has to demand it.
“But sometimes you got to do it,” Cunningham said. “If your team’s not getting you the d*** ball, then if you see one of your star players getting frustrated … it’s like, oh, they’re not messing around. We need to get her the d*** ball. And I think the coaching staff saw it. I think everyone on the bench saw it.”
Hanlen took the same side. “You don’t want to have bad body language. You don’t want to show up your teammates on the court,” he said, speaking to young players. “But at some point, you got to say, ‘I’m the best player. I need the ball.'”
“When they did give her the ball, the series completely changed,” Hanlen said. “If she would have shut down right here and … started not playing defense, different. She didn’t.”
With the game tied, Reese finally got a touch, converted an and-one, and turned straight to her bench. “That’s what happens when you get me the ball,” Hanlen said, describing her message. She also hit a 3, and Hanlen said Atlanta has won 15 straight games when Reese makes one. “There was a different swagger to Atlanta that I absolutely loved,” he said.
Reese finished with 30 points and 16 rebounds, joining Jonquel Jones and Breanna Stewart as the only players with at least 30 points and 15 rebounds in a Finals game. In Game 3 she became the youngest player in Finals history with three straight double doubles.
“She put her money where her mouth is, honestly,” Cunningham said. “I think that Jordin Canada and the other guards have done a phenomenal job with being able to feed her and get her involved.”
“If she’s not scoring the ball, still give her those touches,” she said. “You’ve got to involve her in pretty much every possession, especially when she’s playing such high-level basketball right now.”
Valkyries, put the ISO ball on ice
Cunningham, a shooter herself, wasn’t quick to blame Williams, who followed her 26-point opener with 14 points on 3-for-15 shooting in Game 2 and 15 points on 5-for-18 in Game 3.
“She’s taking great shots. It’s the shot she normally takes, but they’re not falling. And sometimes that happens in basketball,” Cunningham said. “That’s why you can’t always rely on your offensive ability.”
The bigger issue, she said, is how much falls on Williams.
“I do think that Golden State heavily relies on Gabby Williams, as they should, but they’re almost too reliant on her,” Cunningham said. Atlanta, by contrast, “always have a big three regardless of who that big three is,” she said. “I’m seeing that Golden State isn’t really having someone to step in when Gabby is having an off night.”
Hanlen’s film showed Williams thriving off the ball and in transition, and struggling off the dribble against Atlanta’s length. “What do we notice about all of those struggles? They’re all off the dribble isolation,” he said. “Don’t let her just sit there in an ISO. Don’t let anybody sit in an ISO because it has not worked against Atlanta’s defense.”
He said the Valkyries slid into one-on-one play during Atlanta’s third-quarter run in Game 2. “Everybody’s just out playing one-on-one, taking turns,” Hanlen said. “I was losing my mind as a basketball purist because I was like, what are we doing?”
Cunningham’s prescription was simple.
“Valkyries need to just trust the process a little bit,” she said. “You got to trust the work and the process and everything that you put into the regular season that got you to be so successful. And it wasn’t ISO ball.”
“I don’t care how good of a defensive team you are, it’s still going to make it harder than the ISO ball,” she said of Golden State’s drive-and-kick offense.
She stopped Hanlen’s film session to point out one fix. With Tiffany Hayes holding the ball on the wing and Canada sagging inside, Cunningham said Burton should back cut, forcing Atlanta’s corner defender to choose between giving up a layup and leaving a shooter open for 3.
“There’s so many adjustments that both of these teams could be making,” Cunningham said.
She also said Golden State’s deliberate style is helping Atlanta’s help defenders get set. “This is where … being slow is actually kind of biting them in the butt right now,” Cunningham said.
Hanlen said the 3-point line remains the Valkyries’ way back. Golden State made 12 3s to Atlanta’s nine in Game 3 and still lost by 26, because the Dream outscored them by 24 points in the paint, he said.
“They’re going to have to find a way to generate more threes, make more threes, and then somehow not give up that big paint advantage,” Hanlen said. “If you’re a Golden State fan, you start seeing them ISO, you should be closing your eyes. If you’re Atlanta, you’re going to be cheering them on.”
Coach Sophie has entered the chat
Hanlen put the question to Cunningham directly: as a player who feeds off a home crowd, what would she tell the Valkyries about starting games and third quarters on the road? Golden State has been outscored by 28 points in third quarters across the series, Hanlen said, and went nearly five minutes without a field goal to open Game 3.
“They’re thinking too big right now,” Cunningham said. “You need to go in and break down maybe the first two minutes of the game.”
She said the early possessions on film show Golden State still reaching the paint, then forcing the wrong shot.
“They’re still getting what they want, but they’re just not making the right read. They’re taking the contested shot,” Cunningham said. “Some of them, they just need to hit the wide-open spray. Throw the crosscourt pass and make Atlanta’s defense have to move and adjust a little bit and then reattack or then take the shot.”
Her plan would be to shrink the game into pieces.
“That’s how I would rally my team: Hey, make them call the first timeout. Let’s make sure we get the first bucket and the first stop. Let’s go score, stop, score in the first three possessions in the entire game,” she said. “If you’re thinking too big with that environment and who you’re playing, maybe it just becomes too much. Maybe that’s when you keep forcing it. That’s when everyone gets tight. That’s when you stop doing what got you there.”
She would not sugarcoat it, either. “I would literally just say that,” Cunningham said. “I’d be like, ‘Dude, that is a horrible shot. How could we get more people involved?'”
The same goes for coming out of halftime.
“You have to start the game off strong, and you have to start coming out of the half strong. That’s what sets the tone,” she said. “I don’t care if you’re down, if you’re up. If that five who’s out there comes out swinging, you’re probably going to have a pretty good d*** half.”
Hanlen added that he would keep a few scripted plays in his back pocket, such as slips, back door cuts and misdirection, to punish Atlanta for overplaying, and expects Golden State to build “a little bit more of a wall” in the paint on defense.
Happy tears, TikTok moves and runway dreams
Cunningham knows the road back from injury. She tore the MCL in her right knee in August 2025, and she said she related to Hanlen’s account of watching Indiana Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton return in New Orleans.
Haliburton played his first regular season game in 486 days on Wednesday after tearing his right Achilles tendon in Game 7 of the 2025 NBA Finals. Hanlen, who was with him through the rehab, said Haliburton finished with 23 and 12 in a win, then hugged his wife, his mother, and Hanlen and said, “I can’t believe I’m crying. Like, what’s going on with me?”
“You’re talking about an NBA player that has been an All-Star. He’s been All-NBA. He’s on a max contract. He’s been to Game 7 of the NBA Finals, and a regular season game that wasn’t even close to sold out brought tears to his eyes,” Hanlen said. “That’s the love of basketball. That’s the love of the game.”
“Even though you’ve already practiced and you know you’re ready for the moment, that first game is a little bit kind of scary coming back,” Cunningham said. “The rehab gets old, the emotional toll it takes mentally, physically, all of it, spiritually.”
“These athletes, they take so much heat. They also get so much praise from everybody,” she said. “But at the end of the day, you see that he’s human and that he worked his a** off to get to where he is.” Seeing Haliburton “just be a boy who loves basketball” break down, she said, “was sweet to see.”
Cunningham’s own week is packed: the Formula 1 race in Austin, meetings in Los Angeles, a night at “Dancing with the Stars” live with her sister Lindsay, a commercial shoot in Phoenix and work in New York.
Asked how she would do as a contestant on “Dancing with the Stars,” which she said has tried to recruit her the past couple of years but films during the WNBA season, she did not hesitate. “Dude, I think I would kill it,” Cunningham said. “I’m good with my TikTok dances, but this is legit dancing. But I grew up dancing.”
Hanlen, who said the two plan to work out together consistently this offseason to expand her game, teased her about a footwork session in Indiana last year. Cunningham said drills are a different skill. “When you’re live, and you go faster, I think it’s easier,” she said. “But when you really break down stuff, it’s sometimes hard to do.” Hanlen agreed. “Sometimes you just got to let it happen,” he said.
For the show’s new clip-of-the-week segment, Cunningham picked the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, which she called “our Super Bowl.” She named Candice Swanepoel the standard, saying “she will always be the baddest angel of them all,” and said becoming an Angel is her goal.
“I know we want to be inclusive, and you still can be inclusive, but I want to see the baddest walking that runway,” Cunningham said. “It’s exclusive for a reason.” Then she laughed at herself. “If I say that, I’ll never make it to that runway, so please let a few of us in.”
Hanlen compared it to Nike’s best era, when its ads featured only the very best athletes, and said he skipped the show but got a full rundown from Christine, who told him she was more excited for NBA opening night. “I was proud that I really turned Christine into a basketball fan,” he said. His own clip of the week was a recreational league highlight with especially lively sideline fans. “I promise you I would have had more fun sitting at this return right here courtside,” he joked.
The pair also plans to let listeners name the show’s fan base and to break down shooting clips and bloopers that fans send in. “This podcast is actually about to get so fun,” Cunningham said.
Buck up, or the wheels come off
Game 4 is Saturday at 1 p.m. EDT at State Farm Arena, the first half of a doubleheader with the Hawks’ home opener. A loss would leave Golden State facing a 3 to 1 deficit. If needed, Game 5 is Monday in San Francisco.
The Valkyries will face the crowd that rattled them in Game 3 again. “That arena was jumping,” Hanlen said. “That was an electric crowd.”
“I mean, clearly the momentum’s with Atlanta,” Cunningham said.
Hanlen went further. “Atlanta’s pressure, Angel Reese’s individual performance, those are the two reasons why Golden State right now is trailing two games to one,” he said. “If the series continues in this path, it’s looking like Angel Reese could win a Finals MVP. And I don’t even think it would be close right now with the way that she’s dominating.”
Cunningham is not ready to hand Reese the trophy just yet, and she has questions for both sides.
“Everyone is seeing the dominant player that she is, but I’m curious to know: she’s making a lot of shots right now, too. Now, if she has an off night, who’s going to step up? Are they going to be able to pick up those points?” Cunningham said. “Maybe she’s in the mindset that it doesn’t matter, that she’s going to continue to play this way, and I hope she does. She’s playing phenomenal. But I’m curious to know, could she sustain it?”
For Golden State, her message was blunt.
“They got to buck up. The wheels are falling off there, and they have too good of players for their season to be ending like this,” Cunningham said. “So, it’s going to be a good one.”
Hanlen said it comes back to effort. “If Golden State matches that, we’re going to have a game,” he said. “If Golden State doesn’t, I think Atlanta’s going to keep this train rolling.”
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