A poor offensive display from the Golden State Valkyries would hardly raise an eyebrow at this point in the WNBA Finals. In fact, aside from Game 5, their shooting efficiency has failed to crack the 37% mark in any of the six games they have played in the ongoing championship series against the Atlanta Dream. And when coach Natalie Nakase was confronted about her team’s relatively poor shooting, she simply refused to judge the game through a standard “poor shooting” lens.

“What’s our identity?” That was her response. Her point? The Valkyries hang their hats on defense. It is how they have won all season, and it is how they know how to win. But what happens when that defense fails? That was the case in Game 6, especially in the first quarter, which, for WNBA analyst Sabreena Merchant, simply did not look like the Valkyries. 

“It was just unrecognizable from the Valkyries,” Merchant said on The Athletic Women’s Basketball Show. “Usually, you’d think that if something was going to go wrong with Golden State, it would be that they maybe turn the ball over. Or perhaps Atlanta gets leaking out in transition. Usually, you would think their offense is what’s causing difficulty for their defense. They were just allowing blow-bys, not rotating to three-point shooters. None of their defensive principles were intact, which was so weird.”

The Valkyries were, as a matter of fact, historically poor defensively in that first quarter. It turned out to be the most lopsided first quarter in WNBA Finals history. A team that built its entire season on smothering ball pressure allowed the Dream to tie an Atlanta franchise record by hitting six three-pointers in the first ten minutes alone.

By contrast, in Game 5, Golden State’s defense held Atlanta to just 55 points. In Game 6, they conceded 32 in the first quarter alone, more than half of that total. At one point, the Dream even went on a devastating 13-0 run.

For Merchant, perhaps the most surprising part was that the defensive collapse came while the Golden State Valkyries had what was considered their strongest defensive lineup on the floor. Yet, the very players trusted to uphold the team’s defensive standards were struggling to contain Atlanta’s offense. 

“They talked about them being uncharacteristic earlier in the series, and I thought that was more on the offensive end. But them being undisciplined defensively is just a side of Golden State that we have not yet seen in this series. So that was just strange, and I couldn’t understand it. There were all kinds of mistakes. Players you don’t expect to make mistakes, because it was their starting five. I wish I could explain it, but it doesn’t make any sense. And that’s not what you come to expect of the Valkyries,” Merchant added.

Heading into a decisive Game 7, the message for Nakase is clear. They just have to defend better. There are no more tactical secrets to uncover. No more shooting adjustments to wait for. And no more margin for error. For a team that has lived and died by relentless, suffocating pressure all season, the path to a championship comes down to whether they can reclaim their identity.

Natalie Nakase Takes Responsibility for Valkyries’ Poor Start in Game 6 as History Offers Hope for Game 7

Natalie Nakase could not hide her frustration with how the Golden State Valkyries started Game 6. However, she found no one to blame but herself. 

“It just more frustrated me, really,” she said after the game. “Just unacceptable of our poor start. So it was just more frustration. We knew that they were going to be desperate. I put that on me of like, what did I not say, what did I not get to my team of the sense of urgency? For us not to match that is disappointing and frustrating. I need to make sure my team is prepared.”

For Nakase, the Valkyries did not simply bring the kind of effort and intensity that a Finals game of this magnitude demands.

“This is the Finals, right?” she said. “The physicality is supposed to be ramped up. These are win-or-die. This is do or die. This is it. And so you want to have that type of, again, two defensive teams. You want to have that physicality. You want to have that fight. And you want to lay it all out there. So that’s what the Finals is about, is just to be empty-the-tank mentality. And we didn’t do that tonight.”

Despite the frustration, however, the Golden State Valkyries can take some solace in the fact that they will now return to their home court at Chase Center for the decisive Game 7. And the encouraging part for Nakase and her players is that history offers them an advantage heading into the championship decider. Home-court advantage has historically played a significant role in the last game of WNBA Finals, with the home team emerging victorious on 11 of the 13 occasions the championship series has gone the distance.

Nakase and the Golden State Valkyries will be hoping that history counts for something when they take the floor in front of their home crowd. They know the first quarter of Game 6 cannot be repeated. With a championship on the line and the home court behind them, all they need is to look like the Valkyries again.