The phrase "road playoff game" can have a variety of meanings depending on the circumstances, and the one that Paige Bueckers and her Dallas Wings teammates stepped into on Sunday night was about as daunting as they come. They had to enter Ballhalla, home to the WNBA's loudest fanbase, and take on the two-seeded Golden State Valkyries, owners of the league's most ferocious defense. No thanks.
"Home playoff game" can have different meanings, too, as last year's Valkyries might tell you. Their surprisingly successful inaugural season ended with a playoff appearance, and the reward for so thoroughly exceeding expectations was an 0-2 sweep at the hands of the Lynx and one home playoff game, played in San Jose because a tennis tournament had dibs on their home arena. Any bitterness that arose from that experience did not carry over into this season, in which the Valks transformed from a plucky expansion squad playing over their heads into the team with the league's best net rating. Things are different, now, and even through the television screen one could sense how much the home crowd had been anticipating this chance to show what a playoff game in Ballhalla feels like.
Bueckers did her best. In the first quarter, the roar of the crowd was briefly quieted by the Wings' star, who seemed to understand that the best way to short-circuit the self-sustaining process of a locked-in defense drawing energy from and returning it to a locked-in crowd is to go out there and get some tough buckets. Call it a superstar's instinct. And so tough buckets were exactly what Bueckers spent the first quarter collecting. Despite being hounded up and down the court by Gabby Williams, she scored 11 of her team's 20 points in the first quarter on 4-of-5 shooting, and the Wings only trailed by one when it was over. At this point one could detect just the slightest trace of trepidation in the noise of the crowd. Bueckers wasn't actually going to spoil this party, was she?
Nah. The Valkyries may only be in their second season as a franchise, but they have some know-how. Tip Hayes has been in the league for 10 seasons, has now played in 34 playoff games, and knows that nothing restores a home crowd's energy quite like a beloved veteran coming off the bench and going crazy for a few minutes. Hayes entered the game with about four minutes left to play in the first quarter, and immediately poured in seven points while hitting three of her four shots. She stayed in to start the second quarter, which began with her hitting back-to-back threes and scoring two at the line after a hard drive to the hoop. Hayes suddenly had 15 points, the crowd was going crazy, and the floodgates were about to open. Hayes's second free throw made it 29-24 with 7:48 left in the half, and by the time the second quarter was over the Valks were up 58-31. It was the Valks' highest-scoring half of the season, and the entirety of the second half was garbage time; Golden State won, 104-80.
The biggest argument against Golden State's championship potential is their relatively ho-hum offensive rating and bottom-three true shooting percentage. This is not an incendiary offense by any means, but on Sunday they shot 48 percent from the field and hit 18 of their 36 threes. That is the second-most threes that have ever been hit in a WNBA playoff game.
The Valkyries do of course owe some of their performance in Game 1 to the matchup. A defense-first team that sometimes struggles to get into a rhythm on offense could not ask for a better opponent than the Wings, whose best perimeter defender (Azzi Fudd) has been lost to a fucked-up knee, and who are without Alanna Smith providing what strength she has to offer to a thin front court. This team can't really guard anyone, and Game 1 certainly didn't provide any reasons to believe that they will offer stiffer resistance in Game 2.
But who cares about that? Yes, the Wings got run over, and people love to complain about how blowouts are boring, but I put it to you that a feeble Dallas team getting taken apart by the frenzied Valkyries was a perfect ending to the first day of the playoffs. Even with all their wins and sparkling advanced stats piled up behind them, it can still sometimes be difficult to believe that the Valks, in just their second season of existence, are really this damn good. The fans who have been filling the arena all season know how good this squad is, though, and now they have a playoff result to prove it. There will only ever be one inaugural playoff game at Ballhalla. Let the record show that it was a party.
