There's no disputing that the Las Vegas Aces are a championship-caliber team, and that's certainly not the kind of argument anyone wants to start on the day A'ja Wilson was named MVP for a historic fifth time. There's also no disputing that the Aces have played incredible basketball all season, or that Becky Hammon is part of an elite group of basketball coaches that's especially small.
But... it's beginning to look like there's no disputing that the Golden State Valkyries might just be a little bit better right now.
That the Valkyries are already here, in this moment, on the brink of securing their first-ever WNBA Finals run, could actually take your breath away. This is a team that is only in its second year of existence; a team that shuffled the roster and made tough choices this season. Though owner Joe Lacob said he wanted a championship in five seasons, hardly anyone expected it to potentially happen in two.
The Valkyries did a lot of things right in 2025. They hired Natalie Nakase, a move so savvy it should be the blueprint for every expansion team going forward. They also invested in the team before they even had one: plans for a state of the art facility were laid out and clear. Unlike some teams in the WNBA, the Valkyries have been supported well from the very beginning.
And that's what's allowed them to meet this moment and to seize control of it.
It's not wise to get ahead of the facts of the semifinals, but where they stand now is pretty tough: the Valkyries are one game from eliminating the Aces, and meeting either the New York Liberty or the Atlanta Dream in the Finals. Doing so would give the team the chance to host games in Ballhalla again, and would give Nakase the opportunitiy to prove to Lacob she can get the job done in under half the time he wanted.
But more than that, it would give the team the opportunity to give fans something that they won't be able to replicate again, at least not in this way: the chance to graze the unexpected.
It's true that no WNBA team has ever come back from an 0-2 deficit to win the Finals. That tips the scales heavily in the Valkyries' favor, though it doesn't entirely remove the Aces-sized threat. The Valkyries may not have been most people's expected champions (and they still have to fight hard to get there), but it's really special that they're here, grabbing this moment by its face, and refusing to let go.
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