By Steven Serafini
Sonoma Valley Sun Sports Editor
In their inaugural, 2025 WNBA season, the Golden State Valkyries didn’t waste any time in writing professional women’s basketball history as an expansion team by reaching the playoffs in their first year. On top of that, they sold out San Francisco’s Chase Center for every home game, and Natalie Nakase was named coach of the year.
For an encore, in just their second season, the Valkyries continued their historic run, being rated the top defensive team in the league, earning both the second-best regular-season record and second seed for the WNBA playoffs, and then winning both their first playoff game and the playoff series over Dallas.
And then, the Valkyries not only beat the defending champion Las Vegas Aces, who have won three of the last four titles led by five-time league MVP Aja Wilson – but swept them with three straight wins in the best-of-five semifinal series.
Now, on the heels of beating Dallas in a three-game playoff series and dethroning Las Vegas in the semifinals, Golden State is playing in the WNBA finals against the Atlanta Dream in an attempt to achieve the most unlikely scenario of all, winning the league championship in only its second year.
Golden State knew it was going to be tough facing Atlanta in the finals and having to deal with its star player Angel Reese, who is the WNBA defensive player-of-the-year as well as the top rebounder in the league.
In last Saturday’s championship opener, the Valkyries rode the roaring wave of sold-out, home court support in the Chase Center, better known as “Ballhalla,” and rallied from a fourth-quarter deficit to pull out a stirring victory.
Hoping to ride the game-one momentum into Monday night’s game-two showdown, Golden State battled to stay even through the first half and into the third quarter, but the Reese-led Dream managed to pull ahead, and then away, enroute to a one-sided win, knotting the finals at one game each.
What was expected to be a closely contested finals has materialized, with the third game played Wednesday night in Atlanta – results not available at presstime – and the fourth game also in Atlanta. .
Atlanta is another strong defensive and rebounding team, but the Valkyries are athletic, top-rated defensively and unselfish clutch shooters, with a team-first philosophy instilled in them by Nakase.
Joe Lacob, the majority, visionary owner of both Golden State franchises, first stated after purchasing the Warriors that they would be raising NBA title banners, and within an eight-year span – with coach Steve Kerr and the amazing Steph Curry at the helm – they have four of them hanging in the rafters.
Then, when Lacob bought a WNBA expansion team and created the Valkyries, he predicted they would win a title within five years.
With the Valkyries already the most accomplished expansion team in North American pro sports, they are now attempting to validate Lacob’s bold prediction way earlier than expected.
49ers ON A Roll
Despite being one of the older teams in the NFL and having to continuously deal with a swinging door of injuries, the San Francisco 49ers have managed to keep on winning and went into this past Monday Night Football home battle with the Washington Commanders with an unexpected but well-earned 5-0 record.
With most people feeling it was a given that the Niners would defeat struggling Washington, and with a 23-3 second-half lead it looked that way.
But this is the NFL and the 49ers offense came up with zero touchdowns in the second half and were fortunate that the defense managed to hold on, and now San Francisco is an amazing 6-0 to start the season, and the suspense will just keep on building.
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