SAN FRANCISCO — Stuffed with dumplings, walking off the 22 bus past my neurologists' office and across Third Street up to the Golden State Valkyries' arena with the sun at our backs, I told my friend that the first thing he needed to know about the Chicago Sky is that they were a clown organization.
These were not serious people. We were going to roll them. Though the Sky had signed a bunch of veterans and traded for one of the realest hoopers in the WNBA, they had also done an astonishing amount of losing on the margins. Olivia Miles, the coolest player in college hoops, was suiting up for the Minnesota Lynx instead of the Sky. The two expansion teams, one of whom was about to secure the first win in team history that night, fleeced Chicago for second-round picks in exchange for not taking any of the young players they were about to cut anyway.
Had Golden State also made a strange draft-night move? Sure, but it had earned the benefit of the doubt, because it is a smart organization that knows how to conduct itself. As I warned of the Valks' questionable depth in the middle and detailed the steep competency gradient among WNBA ownership, I grew even more confident that my first trip to Ballhalla this season to be a glorious one.
Wrong. Wrong as hell! The Valkyries lost an agonizing one, 69-63. This was in the running for the worst game of the WNBA season to this point, and sported the lowest combined point total of any game so far. Golden State's 63 points is the low mark for any team through the first week of the season. The Valkyries shot 29 percent from the field; Kayla Thornton, who represented the team at the All-Star game last season, posted a clean zero points on 0-for-11 shooting. The grim offensive output was further underlined by Golden State's hot start, in which they raced out to a 17-5 lead that had Ballhalla rocking. It was one of the more frustrating types of losses, one where the fans and the team can sense the win early, puffing each other up, confidence tipping over into cockiness, only for the balloon to slowly deflate over the course of the remaining 85 percent of the game.
Their problem was offensive creation. Golden State runs everything through point guard Veronica Burton and forward Gabby Williams, relying on them to create advantages that, in theory, will snowball into open threes and opportunities to attack closeouts for Thorton and their other wings. The Valkyries are a tiny team: Temi Fagbenle went to Toronto in the expansion draft, and Iliana Rupert is pregnant and out for the season, leaving Kiah Stokes—who joined the Valks this season after winning three titles with the Las Vegas Aces—as the last tall woman standing. Stokes is infamously averse to scoring, let alone shooting, which makes Golden State's offense entirely dependent on moving the defense around then spraying the ball out to shooters. Wednesday night's loss was the nightmare scenario: Chicago's defense could not be moved, and Golden State's shooters could not shoot.
You could sense the first moments of tension late in the first quarter, when Golden State head coach Natalie Nakase first went to her bench and the good shots instantly dried up. The crowd groaned uneasily as Janelle Salaün, one of the most dedicated gunners in the W, began hoisting up shots no matter how far away from the hoop she was or how tightly she was being guarded. I had just finished giving my Kiah Stokes spiel—She just stands there! Becky Hammon merchant! Her biggest contribution to the Aces' titles was getting benched in timely moments!—right as she started balling. Stokes finished with four blocks, 11 boards, and seven points, tying her high-water mark from last season. Still, it's an ominous sign when Stokes is one of your best players.
Chicago got back into and then in control of the game with hard-nosed defense. Over and over again, Burton and Williams would get stood up by Skylar Diggins, Gabriela Jaquez, and Jacy Sheldon. When they would get half a step on a defender, Kamilla Cardoso was there waiting, walling off the rim. Throughout the final three quarters of the game, Golden State not only failed to puncture the Sky's base setup, they never switched up their approach. This was a marked departure from the first two games of the season, particularly the opening win against the Seattle Storm, in which the Valks sought out and exploited mismatches all night.
For whatever reason, the team did not play competent Nakaseball on Wednesday, and the Golden State coach took the blame. "I put this one on me," Nakase said afterward. "I gotta make sure that they understand who we are; I gotta maintain and punch more into like our discipline, of the layers of our defense. That has to be there. We can't just rely on getting Ballhalla all excited in terms of our shooting." I don't entirely blame Nakase—Chicago's ball pressure was amazing—nor do I doubt her ability to make adjustments, even as she juggles an already banged-up roster.
That last bit of her answer was the most interesting bit to me. As I wrote last year, being part of a Valkyries crowd is an exhilarating experience, and fundamentally different from attending an NBA game. The energy is higher, more focused. On Wednesday, when Chicago's universally beloved veteran Natasha Cloud would score, the people around me and I would express our happiness. That she's a cool, outspoken player temporarily outweighed her Valkyries antagonism. When Williams nailed a three to give Golden State a 12-point lead in the first quarter, the crowd pop was like an airplane turbine roaring to life. It felt directly symbiotic, the players and the crowd feeding off each other, the former clearly playing to please the latter, because how could you not seek out something like 18,064 mostly gay people screaming in joy at you?
My friend asked me if it was like this in every WNBA arena. I haven't watched enough in person to say definitively, but the first thing that came to mind was the speaker-shredding madness the other night in Portland, following Sarah Ashlee Barker's game-winner for the Fire. It would be incredible if Ballhalla, energetic as it is, were unique, and I really don't think it is.
We finally pulled the plug with the Valks trailing by six with three seconds left, prompting a jovial crew of lesbians to playfully chide us: "Come on, boys, leaving before the whistle?" Though they'd just played an objectively gross game, the Valkyries still belonged to everyone.
