The Golden State Valkyries are WNBA champions. In a building that would not stop shaking, on a Halloween night that belonged to nobody until it belonged to them, the second-year expansion franchise outlasted the Atlanta Dream 68-63 in the first Game 7 in WNBA Finals history — and lifted a trophy that nobody outside the Bay Area believed could arrive this soon.
It is the fastest championship in the history of expansion franchises across the major North American sports leagues. Two seasons. That is all it took. The Milwaukee Bucks once held that mark, winning the NBA title in their third season back in 1971. The Valkyries just cut a full year off it, and they did it as a team that, by every conventional measure, was not supposed to be here yet.
That, more than the final score, is what will make this title endure. Golden State became the first team in the WNBA’s 30-year history to win a championship without a single All-WNBA player on its roster. They did it with defense, with depth, and on Saturday night, with one of the great individual second-half performances the Finals have ever seen.
Gabby Williams finished with 30 points. Twenty-eight of them came after halftime — a WNBA Finals record for points in a half. She was named Finals MVP, and nobody in the Chase Center needed to see the vote.
THE GAME NOBODY COULD FINISH — UNTIL WILLIAMS DID
If you only watched the second half, you saw a star take over a championship game. But the first half belonged to anxiety, bricked shots, and a Dream team that looked ready to ruin the party.
Golden State opened with an 8-0 run while Atlanta missed its first ten shots from the field. It lasted about four minutes. Angel Reese and Allisha Gray found their rhythm, Atlanta flipped a 9-0 run of its own, and the Valkyries went more than seven minutes without a field goal in the second quarter. They mustered just 24 first-half points, and the Dream walked to the locker room up six, having watched Golden State finish 0-for-10 from three before Kayla Thornton finally connected late in the half.
Atlanta stretched the lead to nine midway through the third quarter. This was the moment championship dreams usually die — tired legs, cold shooters, a road-tested opponent smelling blood.
Instead, Cecilia Zandalasini trimmed the margin, the threes finally started falling, and Williams caught fire. The former fourth overall pick buried three third-quarter three-pointers, Golden State closed the quarter on a 17-3 run, and Williams’ jumper at the horn gave the Valkyries the lead as 18,064 people — the sellout crowd the Bay has packed in all season — made Chase Center sound like a building about to lift off.
The fourth quarter was a heavyweight exchange. Williams opened it with a pull-up jumper. The Dream answered through Gray, who tied it midway through the quarter. And then, with the title hanging on every possession, Williams stepped up nearly 31 feet from the basket and drilled the biggest shot in franchise history — a triple that put Golden State up 60-57 with just over two minutes left.
Kiah Stokes cleaned up a Williams miss for a 64-57 lead with 53 seconds to go. Tiffany Hayes and Veronica Burton sank the sealing free throws. Atlanta cut it to three with eight seconds left, but Williams won the final jump ball, violet confetti fell from the rafters, and the Valkyries had their championship.
Veronica Burton added 10 points, 11 rebounds, and 5 assists — the kind of all-around line that defined this team’s identity all season. Gray led Atlanta with 16 points, Reese had 8 points and 12 rebounds, and veteran DeWanna Bonner became the first player in WNBA history to reach 600 career postseason defensive rebounds. It is a footnote that will matter to her legacy, but it came on a night the Dream lost the Finals for the fourth time in franchise history. They are still chasing their first title.
A SEASON TWO YEARS IN THE MAKING
Context matters here, because the Valkyries’ story is not just about one game. The franchise was awarded in 2023. It debuted in 2025, went 23-21, and became the first expansion team in league history to reach the playoffs in its inaugural season, bowing out to Minnesota in the first round.
Owner Joe Lacob — who also owns the Golden State Warriors and has four NBA titles on his watch — told fans three years ago the Valkyries would win a championship within five years. Second-year coach Natalie Nakase and general manager Ohemaa Nyanin needed only two.
Nakase, asked after the game how she built this group so fast, talked about culture, not schemes. “We had unconditional love that is unbreakable,” she said. “This is proof that if you put in all your heart, all your soul, you can win championships.”
Lacob screamed “Ballhalla” — the nickname the fans gave their home court — as the crowd roared. The number that kept coming up all night: 18,064. That is how many people packed Chase Center for a winner-take-all final, and they never sat down in the fourth quarter.
WILLIAMS’ REDEMPTION ARC IS COMPLETE
For Williams personally, this was years in the making. She had played in Chicago and Seattle before arriving in the Bay this season. She had worn the France jersey at the 2024 Paris Olympics and the FIBA World Cup and lost both finals by a single point — heartbreaks that followed her into every big-game conversation.
On Saturday she buried all of it. Her 28 second-half points are a Finals record. She set Finals records for points (137) and steals (18) in the series, and her 217 points and 23 steals across the postseason are WNBA records. She did it while guarding the other team’s best players and blocking four shots in Game 7.
“I wasn’t going to lose on Halloween,” she told the broadcast afterward, trophy in hand. “Everyone here — not just the players but the staff, the community, the city, the Bay — y’all have been pouring into me all season. Tonight, we were down and I hit a shot, it felt like we were up 20.”
WHAT COMES NEXT
The WNBA has never seen anything like this. An expansion team winning it all in year two, without an All-WNBA selection, in the first Finals Game 7 ever played. The league’s competitive balance conversation just got a lot more interesting — and every expansion franchise that follows will be measured against what Golden State just did.
For the Dream, the wait continues, and the questions will be about whether this core — Reese, Gray, Jordin Canada, Bonner — can get back and finish the job. They forced a Game 7 on the road in one of the league’s loudest buildings. They were eight seconds and a jump ball from overtime.
But Saturday belonged to the Valkyries. Two years old, and already champions.
Source: CNN’s report