The Golden State Valkyries have been making history all year long in their debut WNBA season. There’s been a record-setting pace and attendance numbers. There have been historical individual lines. They had the highest valuation in the league.
But the history they made on Thursday night is perhaps the most important. After beating the Dallas Wings 84-80, the Valkyries officially clinched a spot in the 2025 WNBA Playoffs. They will become the first expansion team in WNBA history to make the postseason, which highlights just how outstanding they’ve been relative to expectations for a first-year team.
It took a strong second half for the Valkyries, against a surprisingly pesky Wings team that was on the road, with nothing to play for. Dallas, which has the worst record in the league, outscored Golden State by 10 points in the second quarter, which gave the Wings — who were paced by 27 points from rookie sensation Paige Bueckers, as well as a double-double from forward Myisha Hines-Allen — a 41-32 lead at the break. But the Valkyries came out of the halftime gates firing, and trailed just 62-58 after three quarters.
The fourth quarter was intense. Golden State scored the first five points of the frame to take a lead early. Then the teams went back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. It’s hard to imagine a closer game: from the 8:53 mark until there were 22.3 seconds remaining, the margin was never more than one possession. They frequently traded leads, and often were tied, but no team could get so much as a four-point lead.
Until that 22.3 second mark, when Veronica Burton — who has emerged as a star this year — had an epic three-point play, which gave the Valkyries a five-point lead. Bueckers scored six points in the final 20 seconds to keep Dallas in it, but Golden State — and namely Burton — made their free throws to pull off the narrow win and kickstart the playoff celebration.
Janelle Salaün paced the Valkyries with 19 points, while Burton and Carla Leite each added 15.
With the win, Golden State improves to 23-18, and are in sole possession of the sixth seed in the eight-team playoffs. Were the postseason to begin today, the Valkyries would be matched up against the third-seeded Atlanta Dream, who have a 27-14 record.
There’s still time for their positioning to change. The Valkyries are just one game behind the fifth-seeded New York Liberty, and one-and-a-half games ahead of the seventh-seeded Seattle Storm. Meanwhile the Dream, second-seeded Las Vegas Aces, and fourth-seeded Phoenix Mercury all have matching records, so their positioning could change as well.
Golden State has three games remaining, and they won’t be easy: on Saturday they host the Minnesota Lynx, who have the best record in the WNBA. On Tuesday they visit the Storm, in a game with massive playoff implications. And they end the season next Thursday, on the road, again facing the Lynx.
The playoffs begin next Sunday. We don’t know what seed the Valkyries will have, or who they’ll be playing. But we know that they’ll be there, and that’s damn impressive.
Unfortunately, due to the Chase Center’s prior commitment to host the Laver Cup, a tennis tournament, there’s a chance that the Valkyries would have to find a new home for the first playoff game in franchise history. Needless to say, that would be a massive disappointment in an otherwise nearly-flawless debut season, and would also cost Golden State some of their outstanding homecourt advantage.
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