Although they won, Gabby Williams and the Golden State Valkyries could not really do much to stop Paige Bueckers, especially when it came to her shooting. But Williams is very much aware of that. For her, Bueckers is the caliber of player who will inevitably make shots, even against a defense as strong as the Valkyries’. All she could do was try to make things a little more difficult for the Dallas Wings star and force her to work for every basket.
Watch What’s Trending Now!
“I mean, she’s obviously an excellent player, one, one of the best in our league,” Williams said, speaking in the postgame press conference, a video of which was shared on the Valkyries’ YouTube channel. “And so, I just wanted to make everything difficult.”
“Obviously, like she hit almost all of her shots today, but as long as I can make them hard, tough shots where she has to really work for them, then she gets tired. That’s just kind of the goal. Just knowing she’s kind of going to get them, but just how can I, you know, yeah, just kind of wear her down,” she added.
Despite her Dallas Wings falling 104-80 to the Golden State Valkyries in Game 1 of the first round, Paige Bueckers still made WNBA history in her postseason debut on Sunday night, delivering an absolutely hyper-efficient shooting clinic. Bueckers barely missed a shot all evening, finishing the game with 21 points, six rebounds, and two assists while playing 25 minutes. And when it came to taking her shots, she was near perfect.
She produced 9-of-10, or 90%, shooting from the field, went 2-of-2, or 100%, from three-point range, and made her only free-throw attempt for a perfect 1-of-1, or 100%. In fact, with these remarkable shooting numbers, Paige Bueckers became the first guard in WNBA history to score 20 or more points while shooting 90% or better from the field in a playoff debut.
The more impressive part of Paige Bueckers’ performance was that she did it while facing the league’s top-rated defense at a raucous Chase Center. The Valkyries were practically first in all the major defensive metrics this season. They had a defensive rating of 100.6 points allowed per 100 possessions, first in the league, averaged 75.1 points allowed per game, held opponents under 70 points 14 times during the season, and limited their opponents to just 41.8% shooting from the field.
And so, that 90% shooting was something Bueckers worked hard for. In fact, speaking in the postgame press conference, Bueckers admitted that the Valkyries’ swarming defense felt “suffocating,” noting that they blitzed her and contested every single look.
“I mean all my buckets were tough, they made it extremely hard,” Bueckers said in the postgame press conference. “They have strengths, and they have people in gaps; they show multiple bodies; they blitz, they make every shot tough, so nothing about tonight was easy.”
The Valkyries really did make things difficult for the Wings throughout the game. They held the entire Wings roster to just 30% shooting from the field for the game. The core strategy was especially effective during a brutal second-quarter stretch, when the Valkyries cut off the passing lanes completely. They choked out the Wings’ secondary options, including Arike Ogunbowale, who made just 2-of-7 shooting, and Jacy Sheldon, who went 0-of-7.
Even though Bueckers finished with an historically efficient 21 points on 9-of-10 shooting, the Valkyries’ defense executed their game plan against her perfectly by forcing her to be a solo scorer rather than a playmaker. By halftime, she had scored 17 points on 7-of-8 shooting, setting a franchise record for the most points scored in a half during a postseason debut. However, in that first half, while Bueckers shot 87.5%, the rest of the Wings shot a dismal 21.7%, going just 5-of-23 from the field.
The Valkyries will be hoping to double down on their perfectly deployed defensive game plan in the second game on Wednesday. Hopefully by then, the Dallas Wings will have answers.