Valkyries Sweep Aces 87-77 in OT, Reach First WNBA Finals in Second Season

PARADISE, Nev.

For 20 minutes Friday night, it looked like the season was getting a Game 4. The Aces took a 19-16 first quarter, a 26-20 second quarter, and walked into the Michelob ULTRA Arena locker room at halftime with the defending champions in front and the crowd believing. Then the third quarter happened, and the whole series — the whole season, honestly — turned on it. Golden State outscored Las Vegas 17-7 in the third behind a 17-0 run, traded blows in a 19-18 fourth, and then buried the Aces 16-6 in overtime for an 87-77 win that completed a 3-0 sweep and ended Vegas' season on its own floor.

The quarter-by-quarter tells the story clean: Q1 19-16 Aces. Q2 26-20 Aces. Q3 7-17 Valkyries. Q4 19-18 Valkyries. Overtime 6-16 Valkyries. That's a halftime lead of nine for the home team, flipped into a 10-point loss by a second half in which the Aces scored 32 points total — including a third quarter where seven points is, in the gentlest possible terms, not going to beat anyone in a playoff elimination game.

Kayla Thornton led Golden State with 18 points, and Gabby Williams — the same Gabby Williams whose clutch plays with Veronica Burton sealed Wednesday's 83-81 Game 2 win in San Francisco — added 16. This is the point where it's worth saying plainly: the Valkyries are in their second season as a franchise. Second season. And they just swept the defending champions out of the playoffs and are going to the WNBA Finals. Expansion teams are supposed to be bad for a decade. This one just beat the best roster in the league three straight times.

For the Aces, the numbers are the kind that sting in May. A'ja Wilson went for 21, and the Big 3 of Wilson, Jackie Young, and Chelsea Gray combined for 56 — which sounds fine until you notice the other 21 points and wonder where the help was. Wilson was presented with her fifth MVP trophy at Thursday's practice, a coronation that now sits uncomfortably next to a Friday night elimination. Nobody's taking the MVP away from her, obviously. But "presented the trophy on Thursday, swept out on Friday" is the kind of sequence that'll hang in the air until next season's first tip.

Becky Hammon saw this coming, at least in the abstract. Before the game, the Aces coach told reporters, "It's the greatest team that wins... We have to be the greatest team, not just the team with really great players." That quote was honest then and it's brutal now, because the Valkyries just proved it: the greater team beat the team with the greater players, three games to none, and the last one went to overtime in the champions' building.

The energy around this team all season has been about Wilson's historic fifth MVP and a core that knows how to win titles. What's left now is the uncomfortable question of whether the roster around the Big 3 is still championship-caliber, or whether a second-year expansion team just announced that the window looks different than everyone thought. A sweep doesn't leave much room for "we were close." Golden State was better in Game 1, better in the clutch in Game 2, and flatly tougher in the second half and overtime of Game 3.

And the Finals matchup is a genuinely fun one. The Valkyries will face the Atlanta Dream, who swept the Liberty earlier Friday and are into their first Finals since 2013. Game 1 is Saturday, October 17, at 3:30 p.m. ET at Chase Center, with Games 1 and 2 in Golden State, Games 3 and 4 in Atlanta, and the if-necessary Games 5, 6, and 7 alternating back and forth. A second-year franchise against a team that hasn't been here in 13 years — no matter who wins, it's a new name on the trophy, and the league couldn't have scripted a fresher Finals if it tried.

For Vegas, the offseason starts now, and it starts with hard questions rather than excuses. The Aces were the defending champions, they had the MVP, they had the home floor in Game 3, they had a halftime lead — and they got outscored 41-32 after halftime and 16-6 in overtime. That's not a fluke. That's a team that ran out of answers against a younger, deeper, more connected opponent. The 17-0 run in the third is the possession-by-possession autopsy: Golden State punched, and nobody in a black jersey punched back.