DOWN by three points with 3:12 to play and then failing to make a field goal the rest of the way, few teams are able to say: “We had the game right where we wanted it.”
The Golden State Valkyries are now one of them.
Gabby Williams gave Golden State the lead for good on two free throws with 1:18 remaining, then capped a 26-point performance with two clinching foul shots in the final seconds, and the Valkyries outlasted the Atlanta Dream 68-64 in Game 1 of the WNBA Finals on Saturday afternoon in San Francisco.
Game 2 in the best-of-seven series is slated for Monday night, also on the Valkyries’ home court in California.
In a defensive struggle in which they scored just nine points in the third quarter as a three-point halftime lead turned into a five-point deficit, the second-seeded Valkyries found themselves still down 64-61 after Rhyne Howard dropped in a pair of free throws for the Dream with 3:12 remaining.
But Atlanta didn’t score again, missing its last seven shots, leaving the door open for a Golden State comeback.
“It came down to getting stops and that’s been our bread-and-butter all year,” noted Williams, whose team’s allowed 335 fewer points than any other in the WNBA this season. “That’s why we harp on it so much, because we’ve built such great defensive habits.
The fourth-seeded Dream, swept by the Valkyries 3-0 in the regular season, matched the hosts stop-for-stop down the stretch, but they fouled more often, resulting in Golden State finishing the game on a 7-0 run, all from the free-throw line.
Williams accounted for six of the seven points — two free throws with 2:15 left to get Golden State within one, two with 1:18 remaining to put the hosts in front and, after Kiah Stokes made one of two for a 66-64 lead with 23.8 seconds to go, a pair of game-clinchers with 4.1 seconds left.
“We always know we’re going to find a way somehow,” said Williams, runner-up to the Dream’s Angel Reese for WNBA Defensive Player of the Year this season. “There was a lid on that basket tonight, but that’s why we rely on our defense.”
Returning from a ring-finger injury that kept her out of the final two games of the Dream’s semifinal triumph over the New York Liberty, Allisha Gray accounted for four of Atlanta’s last seven misses — including twice with a chance to extend the visitors’ lead and a 3-pointer with 8.7 seconds left and her team down two.
Howard, Jordin Canada and Naz Hillmon also missed during the game-ending drought, capping a final 10 minutes in which Atlanta scored just eight points.
“I just think in the second half in particular, we just didn’t move the ball enough,” Dream coach Karl Smesko said. “Too much one-on-one. Angel (Reese) had a real good first half and we just didn’t get her the ball enough.”
Reese finished with 14 points, all in the first 20 minutes, and a game-high 12 rebounds. Gray shot 5-for-19 and led the Dream with 19 points, while Howard managed just 12 points on 3-for-14.
“Unfortunately, we had one bad defensive quarter (the second, when the Valkyries ran up 28 points) where we had some miscommunications,” Smesko noted, “and we had one bad offensive quarter, in the fourth, where we turned it over and didn’t get the quality shots we wanted. We’ll make adjustments.”
Stokes finished with nine points, seven rebounds and four blocks for Golden State, which held Atlanta to 32.8% shooting overall and 4-for-25 on 3-pointers. — Reuters