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Expansion Golden State Valkyries coalescing amid surprising start to the season: 'We're a team of sixth women'

A reigning Sixth Player of the Year, a newly crowned WNBA champion and their end-of-bench contemporaries walk into a sold-out arena colloquially known as Ballhalla.

Except there is no joke or punchline here. The expansion Golden State Valkyries aren’t leaving any room for the jabs and jaunts directed at bottom-of-the-table teams struggling to stay competitive.

No, the Valkyries (5-6) are actually pretty darn good a quarter of the way into their inaugural season. In an unexpected twist for an expansion squad, the roster, constructed sans a franchise star, is in position to secure a postseason berth and is a danger to pull off major upsets along the way as the group continues to coalesce around shared experiences.

“They kind of all share that [approach of] I possibly could have been a starter on my unit,” first-year head coach Natalie Nakase said following a third consecutive win earlier this week. “Or I'm right at the cusp of starting. Or, if I was given 15 more minutes, I wonder what I could do. And so I think that is what they’re sharing right now.”

Settling into those positions they strove for is paying dividends. Already, Golden State put a late-game scare into reigning champion New York Liberty, where veteran Kayla Thornton won a ring. They torched the Las Vegas Aces, the former team of 2024 Sixth Player and Valkyries signature free-agent signing Tiffany Hayes. They held on against veteran-laden Seattle. And they carried late leads against 2024 Finals runner-up Minnesota (Cecilia Zandalasini) and three-headed star monster Phoenix (Monique Billings).

Their next challenge is the Indiana Fever with Caitlin Clark back at the helm of one of the league’s most potent offenses. The Valkyries host the first of three season matchups with Indiana on Thursday (Prime, 10 p.m. ET).

The Fever are coming off a fiery, drama-packed 17-point win over Connecticut that clinched the franchise’s first Commissioner’s Cup final berth. They’re playing behind in the standings (6-5), barreling toward a realistic WNBA championship.

The Valkyries, rostering former Fever players Temi Fágbénlé and recently signed Bree Hall, stumbled against Paige Bueckers and the Dallas Wings on Tuesday in a rare lack of effort, Nakase said. It’s the first major miss against a beatable team.

“I told them for the first time I’m disappointed in just how we fought,” Nakase said after the 80-71 loss. “We’re a team that stays connected, and we fight, and I thought we didn’t do well in both categories. But the bright side is we know how to fix it and how to fix it quickly.”

Nakase, a two-time champion as an Aces assistant coach, designed a team built on defense. The Valkyries’ 98.8 defensive rating is in the middle of the pack — notably better than the Aces’ 102.8 — while they collect rebounds and steals more than almost anybody else in the league.

What appeared to be a hodge-podge of middle-tier talent is bonding and wading into uncharted territory. The 2008 Atlanta Dream finished their inaugural season 4-30 (.118), trailing second-to-last place Washington by six games. The 2006 Chicago Sky went 5-29 (.147), again six games behind the next-best teams. Each franchise set a double-digit net rating as its franchise floor.

The Valkyries are at -2.9, an acceptable split between the runaway Liberty (18.5) and downtrodden Sun (-22.2). Even if they did the improbable and lost the rest of the way, they would have as many wins as either previous expansion team, excluding the groups that came in amid the early years of the league’s growth.

Offense is more of the Valkyries' villain, barely edging the Sky and Sun. With no go-to carrier, six different players led the scoring effort over 11 games and six are averaging double-digits. That balanced effort will have to continue while the best of their former role players and regular starters — Fágbénlé, Zandalasini and Janelle Salaün — are away at EuroBasket. Julie Vanloo is also at the tournament.

“We’re a team of sixth women,” Fágbénlé said before leaving to join the Great Britain national team. “We come from different teams around the league. We know what it takes to be great teammates and we know what it takes to step up and do what we need to do for the team to succeed. So whoever leaves, it’s going to be fine. Someone is going to step up. And we’re going to do it together. That’s really the strength of our team, I think.”

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