Golden State is going to win the WNBA Finals. The Valkyries swept the defending champion Las Vegas Aces out of the semifinals with an 87-77 overtime win Friday night in Las Vegas, and nothing in the Atlanta Dream’s profile should frighten a team that just did that to the best roster in the league.
The sweep was no accident of matchups. Golden State won Game 1 at home 71-60, survived Game 2 by 83-81, then went into Las Vegas and took Game 3 in overtime. Kayla Thornton led the clincher with 18 points and Gabby Williams added 16. Las Vegas got 21 from A’ja Wilson, 18 from Jackie Young and 17 from Chelsea Gray, and it was not close to enough.
Second Season, First Finals
No expansion team in league history has moved this fast. The Valkyries played their first game in 2025, reached the playoffs that same year, finished 32-12 as the No. 2 seed in 2026, and now sit four wins from a championship. Natalie Nakase has been a WNBA head coach for two seasons and owns a Coach of the Year award and a Finals berth.
How they built it explains why they will finish it. Golden State led the league in points allowed by a comfortable margin while ranking near the bottom in scoring, which is a profile that normally caps a team in the second round. Veronica Burton spent the season on pace for the best assist-to-turnover ratio anyone has posted in thirty years of the league. Janelle Salaun broke the single-season record for points by a reserve.
That is a team with no obvious star-power advantage and no interior superstar, winning because its five defenders move together and its bench outscores everyone else’s. Las Vegas had the more talented eight players and lost three straight.
Why Atlanta Does Not Have Enough
The Dream are legitimate. Rhyne Howard, Angel Reese, Jordin Canada and DeWanna Bonner give Karl Smesko four players who can take over stretches, and Atlanta’s first Finals trip since 2013 was earned rather than inherited. This is a fourth Finals appearance for a franchise that has never won one.
The problem is the fit. Atlanta is the No. 4 seed at 30-14, and its postseason has been built on putting up points in the mid-80s and higher. Golden State just held the most efficient offense in the WNBA to 60, 81 and 77 points in three games, the last of those across forty-five minutes.
Finals series get decided by whichever team can still execute its offense in the fourth quarter of game four, and the Valkyries’ entire identity is making that impossible. Atlanta’s offense needs rhythm. Golden State’s defense exists to take rhythm away.
There is one real path for Atlanta. Reese and Bonner can punish Golden State on the offensive glass, and a team that struggles to score is vulnerable to losing a game on second chances alone. Steal a game that way, win one at home, and the series tightens.
It still will not be enough over seven. Golden State won twenty games by double digits this season and just dismantled the champions without needing a single standout scoring night from anybody. That is the profile of a team that does not lose four times in two weeks.
Prediction: Valkyries in five. Game 1 is Saturday, October 17, at 3:30 p.m. ET at Chase Center on NBC, in a best-of-seven format. Golden State holds home court for Games 1, 2, 5 and 7, and it will not need the last two.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.