Golden State walked into State Farm Arena on Saturday and put the Atlanta Dream in a headlock. The Valkyries led 42-26 at halftime — the largest halftime lead of the series — after a first half in which Atlanta scored 26 points, its lowest-scoring half of the entire season, and turned the ball over 14 times, more than its eight made field goals. Atlanta won the second half and lost anyway, 67-62, because the hole was that deep: the WNBA Finals is tied 2-2, and the road to the championship now runs through San Francisco.
A First Half Atlanta Will Not Forget — or Forgive
The collapse was total and it was early. Atlanta scored 11 points in the first quarter and 15 in the second, shot the ball like the rim had a lid on it, and handed Golden State the game one possession at a time: 14 turnovers by halftime, against eight made field goals. The Valkyries, who had been blown out by 26 in Game 3, owned the paint 24-14 in the half, led every fast break 7-0, and had Gabby Williams up to a game-high 11 points by the break. When Karl Smesko burned a timeout midway through the second quarter with his team down double digits and sliding, the building already sounded like it knew.
Angel Reese's half told the story in miniature: four points, five of Atlanta's turnovers, and a third foul picked up before halftime that forced her to defend the rest of the night with one hand tied. The player who had bent the first three games of this series to her will was, for 20 minutes, a bystander to her own Finals.
Stokes Turned the Paint Into a Record Book
Kiah Stokes scored four points in Game 4. She was also the most important player on the floor. Golden State's center grabbed 16 rebounds — eight of them on the offensive glass, extending possessions Atlanta could not afford to give away — and blocked three shots in 31 minutes, anchoring a defense that held the Dream to 33 percent shooting (18 of 54) for the night.
The third block put her in the record book twice over. Per USA Today's Finals coverage, Stokes is the first player in WNBA Finals history to record more than two blocks in four consecutive Finals games, and she passes Sylvia Fowles and Brittney Griner for the most total blocks in a WNBA Finals. Her assignment all series has been Reese, and in Game 4 the matchup finally broke Golden State's way for a full 40 minutes: Reese shot 2 of 12 with Stokes as the wall at the end of every drive.
One Rebound Short
The streak Reese carried into Saturday was a piece of league history: 14 points and 12 rebounds in Game 1, 30 and 16 in Game 2, 21 and 12 in Game 3 — the first player in WNBA history to record a double-double in each of her first three Finals games, and the youngest ever to string three straight together. A fourth would have put her name alone on another line of the record book, with a 3-1 series lead attached.
She finished one rebound short: eight points on 2-of-12 shooting, nine rebounds, three blocks, six turnovers, four fouls in 34 minutes. The honest footnote is that Atlanta was +1 in her minutes — Reese was not the Dream's biggest problem in Game 4; a 26-point half was. But streaks do not grade on a curve. The one that defined the first week of these Finals ended in her own building, at the hands of the defense built to stop her.
The Comeback Ran Out of Clock
Atlanta did not fold. The Dream won the third quarter 19-12 and the fourth 17-13, outscoring Golden State 36-25 after halftime, and cut a 16-point hole to single digits for most of the fourth quarter. Rhyne Howard carried the offense with a game-high 19 points and eight rebounds; Jordin Canada added 10, and Isobel Borlase gave the Dream 10 off the bench. But every Atlanta run ran into the same arithmetic — Golden State always had one more stop. Williams closed with 17 points for the Valkyries, Veronica Burton added 13 points, five assists and three steals, Tiffany Hayes scored 13, and Cecilia Zandalasini was +20 in just 18 minutes off the bench.
Veronica Burton's free throw at 0:27 pushed the lead to 67-62, and Golden State saw the final seconds out. One Atlanta worry travels west: Allisha Gray, who finished with five points and five fouls, left the floor in the final minute taking the tape off her left hand — the same hand that had a minor procedure earlier this month — and did not return. With Game 5 on Monday, her hand is suddenly a series storyline of its own.
Game 5 is Monday night at Chase Center in San Francisco (8 p.m. ET, USA, Peacock and CNBC), and the Finals is now a best-of-three in which Golden State holds two of the three possible home games. Atlanta protected State Farm Arena for exactly one night of this series; now the Dream have to win in the building where they lost Game 1 to keep Thursday's Game 6 from being an elimination game — and they may have to do it against a defense that just wrote itself into the Finals record book.
More basketball is on our Sports front.
Full box score and play-by-play: Gamecast — Golden State Valkyries vs Atlanta Dream. More: WNBA hub · Stats Hub
