Thanks to Dream’s reboot, all the pressure is back on Valkyries for WNBA Finals Game 7
ATLANTA — Oh, this was tough to watch, a fact that had nothing to do with airing basketball on a channel usually reserved for “The X-Files” reruns. This was the Atlanta Dream going into the shop for a couple of days of repairs and emerging as a fully operational battle station, atomizing whatever they took aim at, with the gleeful support of 17,099 people watching. As a result: The pressure in this WNBA Finals has flipped, in no time at all.
In any long postseason series, questions about a team’s readiness for the moment inevitably come and go, for both sides. After the Dream held tight to an 80-69 win in Game 6, it’s Golden State’s test to retake. Never mind the championship guarantee from the owner three years back. A Game 7 stresses the home team most. It piles all the supposed-tos on the group in friendly territory. It squeezes real hard when things don’t go their way.
So many resources have been poured into this club to bring it this far, this quickly, but the calm and resolve required for this final step can’t be ordered for two-day delivery. In its first try for a championship against a reeling opponent, Golden State looked rattled and out of sorts until it was far, far too late.
Good news is, the next game is on Halloween, and the Valkyries can go as a team actually ready to win a finals game.
“We knew they’d play like their life depended on it,” Golden State coach Natalie Nakase said. “For us not to match that is disappointing and frustrating.”
Bad news is, Atlanta did what it had to do Wednesday and Thursday, and then some. First came the players-only meeting before a workout, as the Dream hunted for what had gone missing in consecutive losses as they fell behind 3-2 in the series. They apparently found it in words from Naz Hillmon: Remember who you are, the fifth-year forward told her crew. They’d all been some team’s superstar, at some point. They’d all claimed moments like this before.
Then they came out swinging hammers, jumping to a 17-point lead in less than eight minutes. The offensive car crashes stopped. Spacing and pace returned. Shooting 43.3 percent from 3-point range against this defense was a revelation. “It’s how we’re supposed to play,” Dream coach Karl Smesko said. Atlanta glued its belief back together, and few teams wear confidence as well as one driven by Angel Reese. It even has some fourth-quarter letup and a phantom sixth foul on Rhyne Howard to stay angry about.
“All we needed,” Reese said, “was a little bit of swagger going into this.”
To round off a mostly perfect afternoon, the Dream infused at least a little doubt, too, into the team most vulnerable to it in a winner-takes-all game.
The costly tentative start to Game 6 was startlingly disconnected to the preparation. Before the team’s own workout Wednesday, Golden State circled at midcourt. After a few words from Nakase, everyone unleashed primal screams in unison. A trick to remind the team that it’s in “a great f—ing moment,” the Valkyries coach later explained. Those moments tend to favor the aggressors.
How Golden State could acknowledge as much, loudly, and then go so completely quiet when it counted is unnerving. The Valkyries took 28 shots directly at the rim Thursday. Not all were overly contested. They made 10 of those looks. That’s skittish. That’s jumpy. That’s not what the Dream were doing as much as what the Valkyries were doing to themselves, in their own heads.
Naturally, they insist their nerves are still perfectly in place. “We feel good,” Golden State point guard Veronica Burton said, before quickly upgrading the vibes to “great” in her next breath. It’s not an entirely unbelievable take. This group did self-correct after falling behind 2-1 in this series, after performances about as poor as Thursday’s. But Game 4s are not Game 7s.
Maybe not knowing the difference will help. Maybe this first attempt at winning a world title is the first pancake you toss out.
But there’s no mistaking how discard-worthy that attempt was, between Kiah Stokes going from MVP chants to a scoreless minus-25 in 20 minutes and Gabby Williams missing multiple bunnies on an 8-of-22 shooting afternoon and the general permission the defense gave struggling Dream All-Star Allisha Gray to pop off for 23 points, which matched her total from the three previous games combined. Nakase said she wanted her team to “sit in it” for a while, and “it” was not a place of comfort. “It” was more like a system failure, right before a game featuring all the pressure in the world.
Valkyries fans will fill Ballhalla with the usual ruckus and faith Saturday, but in an elimination game, that energy can get awfully anxious if the results don’t follow the expectations. So much hope exists that this group will follow through on the unreasonable promise its owner made in October 2023 — “I’m telling you right now, we will win a WNBA championship in the first five years of this franchise,” Joe Lacob said then, before the team even had a name – that it can be equally inspiring and suffocating for the people aching for him to be right.
Valkyries fans will fill Ballhalla with the usual ruckus and faith Saturday, but in an elimination game, that energy can get awfully anxious if the results don’t follow the expectations. This Dream group hasn’t closed out a championship together, either, but they are free of any burden to turn courtside frowns upside down.
They’ve also figured out how to compete like there is nothing to lose when there is, in fact, everything to lose. That explains Thursday. It’s an invaluable tool in the box for Saturday. It’s how Atlanta can steal a championship.
The Valkyries aren’t there yet. They weren’t ready to let go, to grab everything they want. But they’ll still be favored to hoist a trophy late Saturday in the Bay Area. They’ll be favored, basically, to understand what not to do in these situations. This time, though? A lot more people will be watching.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Atlanta Dream, Golden State Valkyries, WNBA
2026 The Athletic Media Company
