The Golden State Valkyries have spent an entire month riding high as the WNBA’s hottest team. Until the final five minutes on Monday night.
The winners of nine straight left the floor with their first loss since June 21 after the Washington Mystics poured in 36 fourth-quarter points and closed on a 22-5 run, spoiling Golden State’s bid for a double-digit win streak heading into the All-Star weekend.
The late-game collapse frustrated the Valkyries, who led by as many as nine in the final period but were overwhelmed by the Mystics’ size in the 90-82 loss. Even so, there’s plenty for Golden State to build on as it enters the break, with Gabby Williams headed to Chicago as a starter and 17 regular-season games left.
“Really proud of us, honestly, I think that was also a message,” Veronica Burton said postgame. “We don’t want this to seep into this All-Star break and leave a bad taste in our month. But, I’m really proud of the way we’ve showed up — we’ve competed at home, on the road, we’ve gotten close, we’ve stuck together.”
The positive spin is warranted. The Valkyries are in third place, own the best defensive rating, and have the WNBA’s most productive bench by a solid margin.
The fact that Monday’s finish felt uncharacteristic may be one of the biggest positives. It’s a reflection of how quickly Golden State has established a winning culture. In Year 1, a meltdown loss like that would’ve blended into the rest — they lost 13 regular-season games by fewer than 10 points in 2025. Now, the expectation, and the sentiment, is clearly different.
“You don’t win that many games without handling adversity well. Today was just sort of a tough one,” Kaitlyn Chen said following her career-high 20-point, six-assist outing. “We played four minutes of rough basketball at the end, which is really unfortunate.”
Monday’s defensive lapse was an anomaly, not necessarily a sign of regression. The Valkyries are 0-4 when allowing 90-plus points, but they’ve held opponents below 80 points in more than half of their games. Natalie Nakase directs a stingy defensive operation — the Valkyries surrender the fewest points per game and allow the fewest field-goal attempts and the lowest field-goal percentage in the league.
The Valkyries’ 19-8 start has also validated the organization’s biggest offseason bet: continuity. What was viewed as a potential question mark has become a strength, as Golden State returned more players than any team in the league and trusted that internal development and individual offseason leaps would drive its next phase. So far, it’s been the team’s advantage.
Chen, who entered Year 2 signed on a training-camp contract, has become a highly valuable backup point guard and has scored in double-figures 10 times this season — last year she appeared in 24 games and scored 48 total points. Janelle Salaun is a leading candidate for Sixth Player of the Year, embracing her Year 2 role as a reserve with the biggest scoring punch off the bench in the league. Even Williams, one of the team’s two free-agent additions, is making her career year last season look modest compared to what she has accomplished with Golden State. An All-Star for the first time last season while averaging 11.6 points per game for Seattle, she’s now an All-Star starter averaging 14.8 points per game and is playing fewer minutes.
After securing a comeback win over the Mystics on Saturday at Chase Center, the Valkyries suffered a fourth-quarter collapse on Monday. | Source: Sean Fan/The Standard
Despite the positives, the end of the winning streak served as a valuable lesson for a franchise with limited playoff experience. Facing the Mystics in back-to-back games provided a glimpse of the adjustments and challenges that could await in the postseason.
Washington’s late-game adjustments ultimately exposed some of Golden State’s weaknesses. The Mystics went bigger, attacked the interior, and overwhelmed the Valkyries physically — forcing Nakase’s team out of a small-ball lineup to close the game. The Valkyries allowed 40 paint points and were significantly outrebounded for the second consecutive game. They failed to execute a game plan that centered on taking away the low post against one of the league’s biggest and most efficient defensive teams.
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“Usually we’ve been good in those situations because we talk about time and score,” Nakase said postgame. “This is something that we can definitely learn from, but we have done well in the past with that.”
On paper, the Valkyries have one of the easier schedules remaining. They’ll see Dallas and New York again, and Minnesota twice, but the other remaining games are all matchups with teams currently ninth or lower in the standings. Still, the standings are constantly in flux, and one or two teams getting hot could reshape the playoff race.
Remember just how much the Valkyries’ season changed after the All-Star break last year?
Golden State was just outside of the playoff position this time last year. Then, All-Star Kayla Thornton suffered a season-ending injury, Golden State welcomed Iliana Rupert and Kaila Charles into the mix, and the real, undeniable stretch in Burton’s Most Improved Player campaign began. In the end, the Valkyries squeaked past the Sparks to earn the WNBA’s final postseason berth.
Now, the Valkyries hold three critical head-to-head tiebreakers over likely playoff teams in the Indiana Fever, Atlanta Dream, and New York Liberty, but also are just 1 1/2 games ahead of the fourth-place Wings. After Golden State powered through a two-week journey away from Chase Center to produce the league’s longest undefeated road trip (5-0) in five seasons, finishing in the top four and securing home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs is Golden State’s ideal scenario — and it’s a goal well within reach.
