The Dallas Wings have spent an entire season building one of the most impressive single-season turnarounds in WNBA history, but when their playoff run finally began, head coach Jose Fernandez didn’t need any time to identify how the Golden State Valkyries overwhelmed his team.
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The Wings lost 80-104 to the Valkyries, giving up the first 100-point game the Valkyries have had all season. After the game, Fernandez was asked about the loss, leading him to highlight the Valkyries’ bench as an X factor. Wings beat reporter Myah Taylor posted his comments to X.
“Golden State’s strength is their bench,” he said.
“They’ve got the No. 1 bench in the league,” the head coach added.
Jose Fernandez isn’t wrong. The Valkyries’ bench isn’t just a deep squad, but they’ve also made history this season in multiple categories. With a point-per-game average of 35.9 as a group, the second group made history as the most productive bench in the history of the WNBA, beating the 2020 Las Vegas Aces, whose bench unit scored 35 points per game.
They’ve also had individual members make history. Janelle Salaun, who is also Golden State’s second-leading scorer behind Gabby Williams, scored 509 total points this season without starting a single game, the most by any player in league history, obliterating the previous mark of 457 set by Candice Wiggins in 2008.
During their game against the Wings, it was Tiffany Hayes making the biggest bench impact, logging 21 points on 7-10 shooting, adding four assists and two steals in just 19 minutes. The bench combined for 40 points for the game.
The other strength for the Valkyries has been their suffocating defense, something Dallas has struggled with all season. In the three regular-season games that the two teams faced off in, the Wings lost every single one, averaging just 75.3 points per game. That’s 14.1 points below their regular-season average of 89.4.
Fernandez recognized another pattern that repeated itself in their most recent game: the repeated poor shooting in the second quarter the Wings have against the Valkyries.
“If you look at all three previous games, they’ve all been one-possession, two-possession games going into the second,” Fernandez said.
At the end of the first quarter, the game looked competitive, with the Wings only down 20-21. By the time the second quarter had ended, the Valkyries had jumped to a 58-31 lead, and the game never got any closer for the Wings, a point driven home when both teams ended up sitting their starters in the fourth.
“A 37-point quarter is insane work,” Wings star Paige Bueckers said postgame.
“It was us not sticking to our game plan, locking in defensively. It starts with me, so I’ve got to be better.”
Bueckers was the only effective player for the Wings tonight. She led the team in scoring with 21 points on an outstanding 9-for-10 from the field, adding six rebounds. None of the other starters made a big impact.
Before the game, Valkyries head coach Natalie Nakase had expressed a desire to slow down Bueckers by defending her as a team, but despite failing to do so, they seemingly completely shut down her teammates.
“[Fernandez] changed a couple of sets to free up Paige,” she said.
“She gets blitzed a lot, so he’s tweaked a couple of things. But we also just want to stay aggressive on their players, on their routes, on their tendencies. We just want to make sure they take tough shots, but mainly, we take away their pace.”
Bueckers’ backcourt partner Arike Ogunbowale finished with 10 points on 2-for-7 from the field, while Jessica Shepard, who was named the Associated Press Most Improved Player before the game, failed to score while missing all seven of her shots and turning the ball over thrice.
Now, as the two sides head back to Dallas to play the second game of the series, only time will tell if Bueckers and Co. can bounce back.