It’s been a rough two weeks for the Golden State Valkyries. Golden State fell to the Seattle Storm 67-58 for their fifth loss in six games. In their final game before the All-Star break, it was yet another game the Valkyries couldn’t close correctly.
Trailing 56-54 with 4:48 left in the fourth, the Valkyries were well within striking distance. But their next three possessions were a bad pass turnover, an out-of-bounds turnover, and a shot-clock violation. That gave the Storm ample opportunity to separate, and the Valkyries never made another field goal for the rest of the game. It was a season low of 58 points in a game for the Valkyries.
After the game, head coach Natalie Nakase chalked the loss up to the shotmaking.
“Just didn’t make the shots. We had good looks. It didn’t go in, didn’t bounce our way, and that’s going to happen sometimes,” Nakase said. “That’s why we want to rely on the defensive end and try to push pace. I thought we generated really quality looks for each other. We stayed the course– it just didn’t go our way.”
The loss puts the Valkyries in a strange area midway through the season. Golden State is 0-7 versus the top three teams in the West. However, they are 6-3 versus the next five teams in the standings, so they’re clearly a competitive team. And a tough one to beat. Go ask any team that’s walked into Ballhalla. Ask some of the stars who had the life squeezed out of them by the Valkyrie defense.
But if June was Golden State’s month of kicking open the door and telling the WNBA they have arrived, then July so far has been the league doing its best to shove them out of the house and back onto the doorsteps.
In Minnesota, it was Napheesa Collier and the Lynx strangling the Valkyries’ offense into a drought. In Atlanta, it was Alisha Grey and the Dream blitzing Golden State with a huge run in the final five minutes. Versus the Las Vegas Aces, it was A’ja Wilson demonstrating what a true star can do for a team. And at home against the Phoenix Mercury, it was Alyssa Thomas steamrolling her way to a game-winning free throw.
Like any ball club trying the break into the club of the elite, the Valkyries have hit a wall. And they’re reckoning with how to get through it.
Common denominators in the Valkyries’ close losses?
Rewinding to the wake of the Valkyries’ narrow 78-77 loss to the Phoenix Mercury, a reporter asked Tiffany Hayes and Veronica Burton a particular question about the team’s recent struggles.
“Are there common denominators in the way you guys have been struggling to close games over the past week and a half or so?” the reporter asked. At the time, it was the Valkyries’ fourth loss of July. Losses that were competitive throughout the game until the fourth quarter, when their opponents were able to do little more to get over the finish line.
Hayes and Burton bristled at the question, an understandably tough one to digest less than 30 minutes after falling to a game-winning free throw.
“I don’t know, maybe y’all see it,” Hayes answered, shaking her head. “We’re just working hard, trying to get wins. That’s it.”
Burton jumped in right after Hayes.
“I think we’re just trying to get better with each game. I think we have done that,” Burton said as Hayes nodded in agreement. “Like I do think we’ve… again, we executed down the stretch the past two games, but it doesn’t matter if they’re also scoring or they’re making plays too. So I wouldn’t necessarily say common denominators. It’s basketball. But at the end of the day, we just got to find ways to come out on top.”
From afar, we can easily point to the frustrating mistakes in the final five minutes of some of these games. We can say the offense needs to shoot better. We can go so far as to lament the fact that the Valkyries don’t have a Collier or Wilson-type of superstar who can go get a bucket in the clutch. But that doesn’t make Burton and Hayes wrong.
Just 30 minutes earlier, the Valkyries executed two ATOs to get Janelle Salaün just enough space to bury a three and hit the game-tying mid-range shot. Recall earlier this season in a close game with the New York Liberty, when the same team caught a 5-second violation on a similar ATO situation. The Valkyries’ ATO execution on those plays was small incremental growth, but it’s real, tangible growth nonetheless.
Short-term pain for long-term gain
Still, as Nakase has emphasized throughout the season, this team’s expectations for itself are loftier than close losses. The Valkyries want to win. They want to be a playoff team. And the one thing weighing them down at this point in the season is their inability to win close games. It eludes them, it’s right there on their fingertips, frustratingly out of reach.
That’ll mean figuring out how to maintain a consistent offense during this All-Star break reset. The Valkyries are one of the streakiest teams from beyond the arc. They shoot the most threes in the league, but they also boast one of the lowest shooting percentages in the league. Similarly, Golden State has to maintain that consistency in the final five minutes of the fourth quarter. That means cutting down turnovers and executing to the degree they are capable of.
The second half of the season will be a race for the eighth and final seed in the playoffs. The Valkyries sit in ninth a game behind the Aces and Mystics, and a game and a half behind the Fever. Not to mention the Sparks and the Sky lurking two and three games after them.
In some ways, it’s a difficult spot to be in, considering they were in more control of their playoff destiny at 9-7 at the end of June. But in other ways, it’s exactly where they want to be. After the Seattle loss, Nakase was asked how she feels about her team heading into the all-star break.
“I feel great. I feel proud,” Nakase said. “Especially because again, with a bunch of players not knowing each other, seeing their faces day one, and now being able to go at them in a different way and just be authentically myself, but be truthtellers and go right at them, I feel great.”
“We just had a great conversation about ownership of all the things we could have done better today. Including myself. I thought I could have explained things better and quicker in timeouts. I love where we’re at right now.”
All season long, the motto for the Valkyries has been short-term pain for long-term gain. Right now, they’re in the pain portion of that motto. But this team has defied the expectations of everyone this season. It’s not conjecture when Burton and Hayes say the Valkyries are working hard. It’s not delusion when Nakase emphasizes her pride in where they are at. Golden State has earned the benefit of the doubt on that front.
But soon it’s about reaching the long-term, things change fast in the WNBA. They’ll look to do so when they return from the All-Star break as they make a historic push for the playoffs.