‘Now’s our time’ – How Valkyries swept champion Aces to secure a trip to WNBA Finals appeared first on ClutchPoints. Add ClutchPoints as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
LAS VEGAS – One message, one phrase, one mantra echoed in the Golden State Valkyries‘ huddle as they prepared themselves for a deadly overtime dance with A’ja Wilson and the Las Vegas Aces, against the backdrop of the enormous opportunity to knock off the reigning champs on their own home floor to secure a trip to the WNBA Finals.
“‘Now’s our time. Lay it all out there,” point guard Veronica Burton said, repeating the eight words the team told each other during the interminable 3-minute intermission between regulation and OT. No panic. No stadium pulse. No pressure. And like the breathing exercise they’ve done before in the huddle — in those eight simple words, there was only calm. And confidence.
And of course, their indomitable self-belief.
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So when the buzzer sounded, and the Valkyries broke the huddle, they knew precisely what they had to do — get to that extra gear that only they alone can get to.
“We knew we had an extra gear in us, and I think that’s the beauty about our team,” Burton said. “We play so many people, we have that extra gear. We knew it was ours.”
A gear born out of their strength-in-numbers philosophy. A gear head coach Natalie Nakase has pushed them to find in her “empty the tank, all four quarters” ethos. A gear summoned through the sheer belief they have in themselves and each other. From the starters to the end of the bench to the coaching staff, all the way down to the trainers.
And when the Valkyries found that extra gear, that special and unique extra gear, nothing was going to stop them from punching their ticket to the WNBA Finals, knocking off the Aces 87-77 in a complete and utter takeover of overtime.
Whether it was Tiffany Hayes slicing and dicing her way past Wilson at the rim, Kayla Thornton flying in for offensive rebounds, Burton directing traffic, or Gabby Williams silencing the Las Vegas home crowd with a dagger to put Golden State up eight, the Valkyries seized the moment. And they seized it their way.
Doing it the Valkyries’ way
Candice Ward-Imagn Images
In the lead-up to Game 3, several of the Valkyries were asked was some variation of “When did you realize this was possible? That you could find yourselves on the brink of a WNBA Finals appearance?” And each of them, from Burton to Thornton to Nakase herself, had the same puzzled look on their faces as soon as those questions hit their ears.
Because whether or not the rest of us believed or imagined the upstart Golden State expansion franchise could achieve this much success, this quickly, the Valkyries did. And from the very beginning.
“Day one, our mentality coming in,” Thornton said at the Valkyries’ shootaround the morning of Game 3. “We’re special. We play for each other. And yeah, everybody thinks we’re the underdogs. But we kind of don’t think about the outside, just what we can control inside. And I think that’s what has carried us.”
“It really is a blessing, and to be here in this moment– we’re making history. This is unimaginable,” Burton said after the game, acknowledging the seismic history they’ve made. “But for us, it’s so realistic, and it’s what we expected. It’s what we worked toward. It’s what we believed in the entire year, even in the beginning, when we’re losing some games, when we’re 0-3 against (the Aces). We had the ultimate confidence coming in here. It’s a God thing. It’s an investment thing, from the top down. This is what we put our mind to.”
It’s what the Valkyries were telling us all along. They never hedged. They never wavered. When general manager Ohemaa Nyanin said on Media Day that she believed in the group they brought together, the connectivity, the camaraderie, the buy-in, she meant it. It wasn’t fluff when Williams said she came to Golden State because she wanted to win. She meant it. It wasn’t for the cameras, it wasn’t for the good PR, it was because she believed in the culture.
“It feels special because this is a special group,” Williams said. “Honestly, we about to have some bandwagoners because we ain’t get no love all season. Honestly, nobody believed in us. But it honestly made us smile because we were like, all we need is each other. We just need to believe in each other. You know, like we weren’t a team that was talked about, but just the culture, going to work every day. We just felt that we had something worth fighting for. So I think we’re just like, let’s have- we’re just going into finals. We’re just going into the same mentality, staying together, staying unselfish.”
It’s a dream realized, but a dream still there for the taking.
“When you love something, especially your career and your passion, that if you put the amount of time that we have as a staff, that like big dreams, like literally, this is a dream come true to be you know going to our finals in our second year. That it can come true,” Nakase said, reflecting on all the work it took to get to this point.
“Definitely not over yet, but my dad really instilled in (me) just outwork everyone, Nat. You just outwork everyone; good things are gonna happen. And so yeah, I pushed my staff a lot of them lost their voices tonight so just credit for them of going beyond their limits. But as we know, the job’s not done, and we now have to go another gear.”
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