Valkyries Enter Playoffs With WNBA-Best 99.3 Defensive Rating

The Golden State Valkyries finished their second WNBA season with a .727 winning percentage and the league's best defensive rating, and they open the playoffs Sunday against the Dallas Wings, according to a report published by the New York Post on Sept. 25, 2026.

That record puts a team barely two years old into second place in the standings for a franchise that did not exist before 2025, per the Post.

How good was Golden State's record this season?

The Valkyries finished the regular season with a .727 winning percentage, second-best in the WNBA, the Post reported. That mark represents a jump from their debut season, when the club finished eighth and claimed the league's final playoff seed, according to the same report. Coach Natalie Nakase won the league's Coach of the Year award in that first season, the Post noted.

Who is scoring the points?

No single player dominates the box score. Starters Gabby Williams and Veronica Burton split scoring duties, while reserve Janelle Salaun set the WNBA record for points scored by a bench player in a season with 509, per the Post. The team's bench as a whole averaged 35.9 points per game, the highest bench scoring average in league history, according to the report.

What makes the defense elite?

Golden State posted a league-best defensive rating of 99.3 this season, the Post reported. Nakase's system emphasizes what the Post described as strangling defenses paired with balanced scoring rather than reliance on one star, a departure from the roster-building approach common across the league.

How does this compare with the team's debut season?

Year one produced an eighth-place finish and a first-round playoff exit for an expansion club, the Post reported, making Golden State the WNBA's first new franchise since the Atlanta Dream joined in 2008. Year two has produced a second-place finish and a defensive rating that leads all 13 teams, per the same report — a swing the Post attributed to Nakase's system taking hold with largely the same personnel.

Is Chase Center matching the on-court turnaround?

Chase Center has sold out every Valkyries home game this season, the Post reported, filling a building whose attendance had been closely tied to the Warriors' fortunes. The Post noted that Golden State's men's team won four championships between 2015 and 2022 but has not advanced past the second round of the playoffs in the four seasons since — a gap the Valkyries' run has filled for Bay Area basketball fans, according to the report. Sold-out arenas built around a franchise's playoff breakthrough are not unique to San Francisco this fall: the Knicks released single-game postseason tickets after ending their own title drought, a parallel case of a fan base recalibrating expectations around a team that broke through.

What happens next?

Golden State opens the postseason Sunday on the road against the Dallas Wings, the Post reported. A .727 regular-season winning percentage and the league's top defensive rating give the Valkyries a case as a title contender in only their second year of existence, according to the Post's report — a timeline that would be unusually fast relative to the eight-year run the Warriors needed to build their four-championship stretch.

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