Natalie Nakase Explains What Makes the Valkyries’ Roster ‘Dangerous’
The Golden State Valkyries took many by surprise last season when they finished eighth in the standings and edged out the Los Angeles Sparks for the final playoff spot. With the help of Gabby Williams, they have gone from a feel-good story to the top half of the playoff picture. They currently sit in fourth place, ahead of the New York Liberty, Dallas Wings, and Indiana Fever.
Back-to-back wins against the third-placed Atlanta Dream solidified the Valkyries’ standing as a dark-horse contender, although their 0-4 record against the Minnesota Lynx and Las Vegas Aces isn’t great. In both games, the Valkyries held the Dream well below their season average, showcasing their stifling defense.
But it’s not just the defense that makes Golden State so dangerous. After the second win against Atlanta, Natalie Nakase made sure to shout out her second unit and highlight the importance of the team’s depth.
“The dangerous thing of our roster, our depth, is that we can sub in players and it battles against teams that don’t play as deep,” Nakase said in the postgame media availability, per a video on the team’s YouTube channel.
The Valkyries can rely on their bench and depth
The second meeting with the Dream wasn’t the best offensive outing for the Valkyries’ starters. Gabby Williams missed all four of her 3-pointers on her way to sixteen points, Cecilia Zandalasini was very quiet with just 4 points, Kayla Thornton went 0-5 from the field, and Veronica Burton uncharacteristically dished out only two assists and matched that number with two turnovers.
Williams, Zandalasini, Thornton, Burton, and Kiah Stokes combined for 43 points—20 fewer points than the Dream’s starters. Bench production allowed the Valkyries to make up for that deficit. Janelle Salaün was quiet for her standards, but still outscored every single Dream reserve with eight points (Madina Okot led the way for Atlanta with seven points). Tiffany Hayes added 12, and Kaitlyn Chen scored 13 points.
The Valkyries regularly get that kind of production from their bench. They lead the W in bench points per game with 34, and Salaün has scored 81 more points off the bench than anyone else in the league. She is the clear frontrunner for Sixth Player of the Year.
The Lynx and Dream, meanwhile, average the fewest bench points per game, and the Aces rank 10th for the season, sorely missing Chennedy Carter in June. The Valkyries may not have the star power to match what the top three teams in the standings have, but their depth is so good that they can survive quiet games from their stars, don’t have to ask someone like Williams to play a crazy number of minutes in the regular season, avoid a notable drop-off when they make substitutions, and regularly outplay other teams’ second units.
What’s perhaps most impressive is how the Valkyries have managed to survive Iliana Rupert’s absence with their depth. Rupert was primed to come into the season as a full-time starter and put together a career season. However, she was ruled out for the entire season due to pregnancy. When the news broke, it was too late for the Valkyries to find a notable replacement, so Kiah Stokes slotted into the starting lineup, and Laeticia Amihere and Nadia Fingall are the two backup bigs on the roster.
Stokes has been phenomenal, especially as a defensive anchor—she had seven blocks against the Dream—but Amihere and Fingall aren’t a steady part of Nakase’s rotation. Usually, she uses Salaün or Thornton as a small-ball stretch five whenever Stokes is on the bench, and they have done a great job defensively. Even with just one center Nakase really trusts, the Valkyries allow the fewest points in the paint.
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Elaine Blum covers women’s basketball for On SI from Europe. She has been writing about women's hoops since 2023 and holds a Bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism and a master’s degree in American Studies with a focus on women’s and gender studies. She started playing basketball when she was 10 years old and won several league and state championships at the youth and senior level.