We’ve spent the better part of this week arguing about free throws. Indiana Fever players getting hammered on drives nobody whistled, Caitlin Clark bleeding from an elbow with no call attached, head coach Stephanie White drawing a fine for saying the quiet part about the officiating out loud after Las Vegas eliminated her team in Game 3. Fair arguments, every one of them, and the league has earned the scrutiny. But underneath that noise, the Golden State Valkyries, a franchise that didn’t exist two seasons ago, just became the first expansion team in WNBA history to reach a semifinal, and outside the Bay Area, nobody seems to be talking about it.
Golden State finished off the Dallas Wings in three games, erasing a 16-point second-half deficit at Chase Center to win Game 3, 77-73, on Thursday night. Gabby Williams did the heaviest lifting, scoring 17 of her team-high 19 points after halftime, per Yahoo Sports. The Valkyries’ comeback over the Dallas Wings is the whole reason this is a story at all — not momentum, not destiny, two monster quarters from a player most of the country still can’t place. That sends Golden State to a semifinal against the Las Vegas Aces, the defending champions, with Game 1 set for Sunday at Chase Center in a best-of-five series.
(If that late-game math sounds familiar, it’s because this exact team mounting a 16-point comeback is turning into a bit. They did almost the identical thing to the Los Angeles Sparks in the regular-season finale two weeks earlier. Different opponent, different month, same refusal to lose a fourth quarter.)
Here’s the part this week’s loudest conversation keeps skipping past. Golden State is doing this with a roster built from an expansion draft two years ago, with no returning continuity to lean on, and it’s further into October than franchises with a decade’s head start ever get. In 2025, their first season, they went 23-21 and became the first expansion team in WNBA history to make the playoffs at all, as an eight seed. Head coach Natalie Nakase won Coach of the Year for it. This year they won nine more games, finished 32-12 as the West’s second seed, and now sit one series away from a WNBA Finals berth.
That trajectory plays right into the parity argument everyone was making before the bracket even started — that the league’s current structure lets a roster assembled from scratch compete immediately instead of needing years to marinate. The Valkyries aren’t a hypothetical case for that argument anymore. They’re the actual proof of it. The usual expansion-team script has a team spending its early seasons losing on purpose, stockpiling lottery picks, and hoping continuity eventually turns into chemistry. Golden State skipped straight past that script without anyone outside the Bay noticing it happened.
(I spent two years writing research notes for TV analysts who got the on-air credit for using them, so I’ll admit a soft spot for anything good happening while nobody’s looking. This qualifies.)
There’s an irony buried in the coaching matchup, too. Nakase spent three seasons as an assistant in Las Vegas, on the Aces’ 2022 and 2023 championship teams, before Golden State hired her as its first head coach. The organization she helped build a dynasty for is now the only thing standing between her expansion club and the Finals. She knows exactly what that team looks like up close, which is more than most of this year’s playoff field can say.
Which brings the week’s other story back into the frame. Las Vegas eliminated Indiana in Game 3 on Wednesday, and the box score did the Fever few favors: a 35-20 free-throw disparity, Caitlin Clark left bleeding from an uncalled elbow, and White fined afterward for criticizing the officiating. Every bit of that deserved the attention it got. None of it is wrong to be angry about. It’s the kind of story that dominates a news cycle precisely because it’s easy to point at — a disparity, a blown call, a coach punished for saying so. The Valkyries’ run doesn’t give anyone an obvious villain to point at, which might be exactly why it got buried under the louder story instead of running alongside it.
But I think the more revealing story this week is the one happening a round later, not the one generating the headlines. The Fever-Aces series is a story about what’s broken in this league. The Valkyries’ run is a story about what the league is actually building toward, and I’d argue it says more about where the WNBA goes from here than another officiating controversy does. An expansion team isn’t supposed to be competitive this fast, let alone threatening A’ja Wilson and a two-time-defending champion for a Finals spot in year two.
The team’s own account framed it about as plainly as you can:
https://twitter.com/valkyries/status/2106223355372421425
No qualifiers needed there. First semifinal in franchise history, hosting the team that just ran through the Fever on its way here.
Vegas is going to be the tougher measuring stick by a wide margin, and nobody inside that locker room should pretend otherwise. Wilson and the Aces have been through series like this a dozen times over. The Valkyries have been through it zero times, and a roster this new finding out what a championship-level series actually demands is its own kind of education, win or lose. Still, two years ago this roster existed only on paper, assembled one unprotected name at a time out of an expansion draft, and by Sunday they’ll be hosting a Game 1 that nobody outside Northern California saw coming this soon. Whatever happens against Las Vegas, that part already happened. The rest of the league should probably start paying attention before it happens again next year with a roster that actually has continuity to build on, and no officiating controversy around to bury the story this time.
