Valkyries Are Valkyries are WNBA Contenders + Caitlin Clark's Game and Postgame Reaction

in my eyes, and it's not your conventional way of doing it in the WNBA, but increasingly are looking like a contender and showed it again last night in what was the game that this has been a budding rivalry, I think it's fair to say, between these two teams.

I think more than fair, frankly.

This team, this game didn't have the heat, if you will, of the last one in general.

I thought the intensity was a little bit lower, and I I'm okay with that.

But this is a game where the Falcons just kind of handled business over the course of it and did so by committee, by their bench, by the defense.

They're doing it in the way that Golden State really knows how to do it.

And, again, it's not your usual superstar-led team, but you can't knock what's happening, and that's that they're winning games over and over and over again.

Andrew, it's hard to exactly put them in a tier because they're so different than every other team.

In your eyes, are you seeing contender here? What are you seeing in terms of the current form of the Golden State Valkyries?

Yeah, I mean, I think we have to look at them as a contender, right? I mean, you're the second best team in the league right now.

You are continually giving problems to the best teams in the league, the top six teams in the league.

There are two in particular in Atlanta and Indiana that you've just tortured this entire season on both ends of the ball.

And there's something very almost like Tim Duncan Spurs-y about this team.

Also, to take a WNBA analogy, I mean, I wouldn't even say that this is like one of those old school Lynx teams that were like some of the parts where it was Brunson, Fowles, Whalen.

Those were all Hall of Famers, right? Those are stars,

man.

This is

different.

Yeah, this just doesn't feel like a team that is powered by like... tier 1a stars but like i think you have four solid 1b stars here and there's an interesting argument to be made about depth and uh friend of no cap space here and so he had um michael volpel from espn on her show on ringer wmba show this week and one of the things um that big vote was saying was the the difference in the salary cap now is allowing certain teams to decide if they want to prioritize a deeper roster or if they want to allocate the super maxes to specific players because you now suddenly have more money to play with you can take a player on an eight hundred thousand dollar dollar a year contract for instance and that is a contract that you can get a better player and gives you more financial flexibility than the old cap, which was your superstars getting paid two 50, but that one B player might be making like two 10.

And that's like where the mix in between is right.

Whereas now it's, There's a gap of two or even $300,000 a year in terms of what you can pay players.

So you can go some of the parts, a lot of six to seven to $800,000 a year players.

That basically is what this Golden State Valkyries team is, right? It's finding the middle.

And for a league that in a pre 2026 CBA era was utilizing a lot of stars at the top, you know, to, to take the links example, right? Like you have four or five hall of famers on that team that you can afford to all kind of pay.

And they, they're them taking pay cuts.