WNBA Roundup: A Trophy Tour, a Finals MVP for the Ages, and the Morning After in the Bay

The morning after is supposed to be the easy part. You win the trophy on Saturday night, you sleep in it a little, and Sunday is for flowers. The Golden State Valkyries got most of that script. What they also got, in the span of about 24 hours, was a Finals MVP performance being measured against league history, praise from the biggest names in their own building, and one genuinely strange moment: a championship team walking into an NBA arena with the trophy and hearing something closer to polite applause than a roar. All of it, good and weird, is the story of the WNBA's first full day with a new champion.

Start with the game itself, because everything since flows from it. Golden State closed out the Atlanta Dream 68-63 in Game 7 at Chase Center on Saturday night, according to Athlon Sports, winning a championship in just the club's second season. The American Star News noted it was the league's first Finals Game 7, and the series earned the stage: Atlanta took a 2-1 lead behind two double-digit wins, Golden State answered with two straight to go up 3-2, and Atlanta won Game 6 at home on Thursday to drag the thing to a decider. In the decider, Veronica Burton sank two free throws with 5.1 seconds left to seal it, per ClutchPoints, and Kiah Stokes owned the glass with a game-high 13 rebounds, The American Star News reported.

Then there is Gabby Williams, and there is no honest way to write this roundup without stopping on her for a while. Williams scored two points in the first half of Game 7. She scored 15 in the third quarter, with three 3-pointers, and 13 more in the fourth, finishing with 30 points, three rebounds, two assists, two steals and four blocks, according to ClutchPoints. Twenty-eight of her 30 came after halftime, in a winner-take-all game, on the road to a title. ClutchPoints reported she joined Penny Taylor as the only players in league history to score 30 in a winner-take-all Finals game. Across the series she averaged 19.6 points, 3.6 rebounds and 2.7 assists, Athlon Sports reported — and that was the encore to a season in which she made the All-Defensive First Team, finished second in Defensive Player of the Year voting, and, weeks earlier, carried France to a World Cup silver medal in Berlin, where she was named the tournament's Best Defensive Player. FIBA's women's World Cup account marked the title with a post Athlon quoted in all caps: "GABBY WILLIAMS YOU DESERVE EVERYTHING." Hard to argue the punctuation.

The Bay's basketball royalty weighed in, too. Stephen Curry posted his tribute on Instagram, as ClutchPoints reported: "One more for The Bay. Congratulations to all the Valkyries and to Gabby Williams for the Finals MVP! Huge." Warriors coach Steve Kerr, whose team shares the building, said he was blown away by Williams' Game 7, per ClutchPoints. And inside the locker room, Stokes said the quiet part warmly before handing Williams a bottle of wine, in comments ClutchPoints relayed from CBS Sports: "I'm super impressed by Gabby. I'm very, very proud of her, and I'm just glad that tonight she showed who she really can be. She's been our leader, she's been our offense, the head of it all season. We could not have done this without you." Williams, for her part, got reflective about the road here, telling reporters what she would say to her younger self, per ClutchPoints: "I would tell little Gabby how important, how far love can go. That's what got me going tonight. That's what's got me going all season."

Which brings us to Sunday night and the odd part. The Valkyries were honored during the Warriors' game against the LA Clippers at Chase Center — Tiffany Hayes carried the trophy onto the court — and the ovation was, charitably, muted. Basketball Network reported the champions were honored during a timeout in front of some 18,000 fans and received a relatively lukewarm reception, a stark contrast with the thunderous "Ballhalla" crowds that, The American Star News noted, sold out every Valkyries home game across the franchise's first two seasons. Social media split on the explanation, Basketball Network reported: some fans mocked the Warriors crowd, while others blamed the format — a timeout, when people are in the concourse, rather than a halftime ceremony. One fan posted on X, as Basketball Network reported: "That is the quietest the Valkyries have ever heard Chase Center." Both things can be true: the planning undersold the moment, and the moment deserved better planning. A second-year expansion team just did something no expansion team in sports history had done this fast. That earns a halftime.

The other locker room had its own Sunday. Angel Reese finished Game 7 with eight points and 12 rebounds, per Sportskeeda, capping a Finals that swung wildly for her: 14 points and 12 rebounds in her Finals debut, 30 and 16 in Game 2, 21 and 12 in Atlanta's Game 3 rout, then a quiet Games 4 and 5. The Dream's wait for a title — and Reese's — runs at least another year. The rivalry kept its edge to the end: Valkyries center Aminata Gueye, who jawed with Reese all series, posted her trophy photos Sunday with a pointed caption aimed at Reese's Game 3 trash talk — "#bumwithaRING," Sportskeeda reported. Reese's response was not a clapback. It was a plan — Florida, rest, work, and no podcast — and we gave it its own story: Angel Reese is going quiet for the offseason.

So what does a champion do for an encore? The bones are in place. Williams is under contract through 2028, entering the second year of her three-year, $3.7 million deal, according to Athlon Sports, and Basketball Network reported the core of Williams, Janelle Salaun and Veronica Burton is expected to remain intact under head coach Natalie Nakase. The franchise was valued at $1 billion in May — the first WNBA team to reach that mark, per The American Star News — and Golden State's stated plan is to chase a repeat in 2027. Sunday night's other game in the building offered a reminder of how quickly the sports calendar moves on: the Warriors beat those same Clippers 124-112 behind a rookie's career night, as we covered in our NBA roundup. The Valkyries have the trophy, the MVP, the valuation and the loudest home crowd in the league when it's actually their crowd. The only thing they don't have yet is a proper Chase Center ovation. Halftime, next time. They've earned it.