Kiah Stokes Is The Unlikely Star Of These Grueling WNBA Finals

SAN FRANCISCO — Moments after the Golden State Valkyries wrapped up a dominant, ugly, 64-55 Game 5 win, the home PA announcer pulled in Valkyries center Kiah Stokes for an on-court interview. The crowd roared its approval with such deafening force that Stokes was completely drowned out. I wish I could tell you a single thing she said, though the crowd's "MVP!" chant was clear.

The idea of a player who's averaging 4.3 points per game in the playoffs winning Finals MVP may seem a little ridiculous on its face, but these are no typical WNBA Finals, and Stokes is no typical defense-first center. These are the Finals of anti-basketball, the flow of the game only rarely doing anything besides oozing or sludging along as each team's excellent defense neutralizes their relatively inept counterparts. Stokes is more responsible for this than anyone else in these Finals, both for the way she's made the paint a zone of impossibility for the Dream, but also for her own peculiar offensive contributions. The box score captures some of what makes Stokes so special, though most of her impact eludes quantification. If you can see it, it's in the size of her shadow, an Angel Reese 2-for-8 night here, nine steals for Stokes's teammates there. Watch these Finals closely, and you'll see Stokes at the center of everything.

Hilariously, you didn't have to look very hard in Game 5, as Stokes scored 13 points, which is like any other player scoring like 50. Remember, Stokes is behind multiple zero-point masterclasses in these playoffs, and she typically only shoots when she has to. She doesn't even get to the free throw line, as that would necessitate her doing something with the ball besides hand it off at the top of the key or let it fly late in the shot clock. "To be honest, Tip cussed me out when I passed up one," Stokes said after the game, "So I didn't wanna make her mad again." Stokes hit a season-high three triples, each of which came within the flow of the offense. Stokes's job on that side of the ball is primarily to set bone-rattling screens, which she's excellent at. If she pops into an open three, great, she can hit it; she rarely looks for the ball on the roll, and almost never in the post.

Pretty much all of that is a nice bonus, as Stokes's primary job is to anchor the Valkyries defense. Before we get into the specific stuff she's doing that has Reese in hell and has the Dream shooting a collective 9-for-48 against Stokes contests, it's worth foregrounding the profound effect Stokes's defense has on the collective mentality of the Valkyries. It's striking how reassured everyone else feels knowing Stokes is back there prepared to seek and destroy anyone trying to score at the rim. Coach Natalie Nakase talks about Stokes with an almost mystical awe. When speaking after Game 5 about her mental reset after going down 2-1, Nakase recreated her inner monologue, which went, "Hold on ... long series ... Kiah Stokes." When Veronica Burton was asked about how Stokes has made her life easier, she shook her head and smiled as if she couldn't believe her own luck. I believe Nakase when she credits Stokes with upholding her teams' mental toughness, to say nothing of how she deputizes Burton and Gabby Williams to fly into every passing lane.

She does all that by blocking shots with extreme prejudice. Stokes's 17 blocks are an actively increasing Finals record, and she's posted at least three in every game so far. Stokes has shown off some real range as a shotblocker. There are the simple stuffs, mostly on Reese, where she absorbs a shoulder to the gut with her arms aloft then lets Reese do the work of getting blocked by maintaining her verticality; there are the fadeaways she sees coming two dribbles early, timing them up before the gather and spiking them away; there are the weakside rotations on drivers, always timed to the moment of commitment, where the opponent has no dump-off outlet, no space to pull-up, nothing to do but try and fail to hoist it aloft; and then there are my favorites, the blocks where Stokes has to make up a spatial disadvantage, flying across the lane and affirmatively tracking the ball rather than forcing the cutter to toss it into her hands.

Her work on Reese has been exemplary this series, especially over the past two games. Reese was totally invisible in Game 5, taking just eight shots and making two of them, an improvement over her 2-for-12 nightmare in Game 4. The difference isn't Stokes doing anything different, but that she's guarding Reese more often. Reese is a special player, capable of brutal excellence, but in Games 4 and 5, Stokes's smothering defense has left her looking stunned, as if she recognizes the futility of continuing to try Stokes. All of Reese's best stuff has come against reserves, most cruelly poor Aminata Gueye, and while she's had limited success against Stokes, she and her team recognize that any consistent scoring will have to involve going around Stokes instead of through her. "We just gotta get [Stokes] moving a little bit more," said Dream coach Karl Smesko when I asked him after the game how to attack the Valkyries defense.

I don't know how you move Stokes out of the paint without further compromising an already impinged Dream offense, especially with the rest of the Valks defense so ferocious on the ball. That's the real trick to all of this: Stokes's rim protection and the team's perimeter ballhawking are mutually reinforcing. Stokes has been in the league for over a decade, and has played several very different roles, none more suited to her gifts than this one. Remember, her benching was the move that sparked the Aces' season-defining win streak last season. Not every team has the talent base to leverage Stokes's talent for rim protection like Golden State, and no other team besides the Valkyries would so gleefully and effectively build their team around it. Stokes had no place in Vegas's best units, which was more about A'ja Wilson's talent and its spatial demands than Stokes's deficiencies, though those deficiencies mattered. Those hardly matter on the Valkyries, and her strengths matters way more.

"It's team defense," Nakase said. "It's always been team defense. We have not wavered away from that. And she's our anchor." That quote both highlights the Valkyries' greatest strength and shows why Stokes has been their best player in the Finals. Gabby Williams hasn't been her usual self this series since Jordin Canada boxed her out knee-first in Game 1, and Burton's offense hasn't been consistent. You can't give the MVP trophy to the concept of "team defense," as fitting as that might be in the worst shooting Finals of all-time. But there's one player who makes it all function. If you need her, she'll be down in the paint.