Back in 2016, when Joe Lacob infamously declared his Golden State empire was “light-years ahead” of everyone else, the basketball world chuckled, rolled its eyes, and waited patiently to turn that quote into a meme whenever a Warriors draft pick busted and the dynasty eventually faded.
The Golden State Valkyries — the new wing of Lacob’s realm — haven’t played 100 games in franchise history. Yet they’re four wins away from a WNBA title in just their second year of existence.
This isn’t supposed to happen. It defies logic, history, and our understanding of how things are supposed to work in the W.
The top women’s basketball league in the world has never been deeper, more vicious, or more loaded with transcendent talent in its 30 years of existence.
There’s simply too much competence across the board for an expansion team to barge into the party and drink all the top-shelf champagne.
Right?
Apparently wrong.
When Lacob announced this franchise, he promised a championship within five years. That felt like standard owner bravado, the kind of hollow promise designed to sell season tickets. I remember standing on the floor of Chase Center when it happened, popping to attention as the words hit my ears and looking around towards anyone to confirm that he, in fact, just said that.
And I wasn’t the only one doing it.
I might have been chuckling — this guy — but he wasn’t kidding.
Well, his team is running roughly three years ahead of schedule.
Year 1 of the Valkyries was cute. It was plucky. And it was a wildly impressive accomplishment in its own right.
The Valkyries scraped together an expansion roster of castoffs and spare parts, put together great systems and better team chemistry under coach Natalie Nakase, and played a brand of suffocating defense that crashed the postseason party out of the gate.
Cute doesn’t win titles, though.
No, for that, league history shows you need true it-all-flows-through-me superstar.
The kind that the Aces, for instance, have in A’ja Wison, the now five-time MVP, and Chelsea Gray.
And yet when these teams, the Valkyries and Aces, met with a trip to the Finals on the line this past week, it was Golden State who was — front-to-back, Game One to Three — the superior team. The championship-level team, even.
Golden State’s entire existence on this stage is a giant, unapologetic middle finger to traditional roster construction.
Veronica Burton was once discarded by Connecticut. Friday night, she was out-dueling Gray in crunch time with the poise of a tenured assassin.
It was Tip Hayes — a former Ace — bringing immediate chaos and unrelenting dribble penetration off the bench.
It was Kayla Thornton — a champion with the Liberty who made available in the expansion draft — lifting her game when the moments of the game called for it.
It was Kiah Stokes — another former Ace — walling off the paint, cleaning the glass, and turning easy layups into mathematical impossibilities.
Those aren’t role-player highlights. Those are championship contributions delivered by players other front offices deemed expendable.
“It’s crazy,” Burton told NBC after the final buzzer.
She’s right, but, on the other hand, the Valkyries aren’t showing us anything we didn’t see all summer, when this group ground opponents into fine powder.
Teams coming into the league are supposed to tank. They’re supposed to pray for lottery ping-pong balls, draft a generational scoring savior, and spend half a decade learning how to win.
The Valkyries saw that path, chose a different one, and skipped the line.
Their two first-round draft picks? Only one is on the roster, and she doesn’t even crack the playoff rotation.
They don’t have a renowned, all-WNBA bucket getter for the clutch, though this series against the Aces threw that take into question.
No, this team has built a roster by winning on the margins. Their one splashy offseason signing was Gabby Williams on a max deal, and she was brought in, mainly, because he’s yet another elite defensive player. Williams finished 32nd in scoring last season.
But when the buckets needed to be made Friday in crunch time of a closeout game, it was Williams — not Wilson or Gray — who came through again and again.
Who cares if this was the first time on this kind of stage for this team? They were ready.
The Valkyries team is the old Golden State ethos stripped of its arrogance and rebuilt with pure grit: Strength in Numbers, but with brass knuckles.
Williams and Burton owned the high-leverage minutes in Game 3, but that title DNA the Valks showed all season — the one that every player in violet embodies — showed up in those now famous margins, this time of the game.
No non-charter expansion team in WNBA history had ever reached the Finals in its second season until Friday.
Lacob promised a revolution, and the Bay Area built a juggernaut out of attitude and toughness.
The Valkyries hacked the league. And now they’re on the precipice of running off with the crown.