Golden State Valkyries general manager Ohemaa Nyanin was asked back in December of 2024, right after the WNBA’s first expansion draft since 2008, what the first word that came to mind was when thinking about the team she had just assembled through the process.

“Competitve.”

After picking Kate Martin, Kayla Thornton, Temi Fagbenle, and others through the process, Nyanin was clearly confident that she, alongside new head coach Natalie Nakase, had just assembled a team of players willing to defend for all 40 minutes, and willing to represent the energy of Golden State as a basketball city.

She’d end up being very right about that. 

Golden State, the first expansion team to play since the Atlanta Dream did so 17 years ago, went from being considered one of the worst teams on paper headed into the 2025 season to the 8 seed, set to face off with the Minnesota Lynx in the First Round of the WNBA Playoffs. They’re the first expansion team to make the postseason in their inaugural season in WNBA history. 

It’s a huge accomplishment for a squad assembled out of a pool of players other teams didn’t deem crucial enough to protect from the expansion draft, and from the remaining players on the free agency market. 

Golden State managed this by focusing on two things throughout the year, as hammered home by Nakase at the helm: defense, and chemistry. The first year head coach told reporters after the expansion draft that those were the two things she was most looking for with this brand new roster, and something that she wanted to establish as a cornerstone of the Valkyries’ culture for the year. 

“I think, like I’ve kind of just been mentioning about the characteristics, when you have players that compete every night at a high level, and like I said, if you just watch these players, all 11 players, they compete. They compete like their life depends on it. I think I have a lot of confidence with that, because to me that means that they have a great work ethic. If they’re playing that hard, that means that they have at least had to have practiced that hard,” said Nakase of what she expected from the initial roster handed to her in that draft. 

Competing is what Golden State did in 2025. They managed to topple contending teams like the New York Liberty (twice), the Las Vegas Aces, the Seattle Storm (twice), and the Atlanta Dream, and they were a top-3 defensive team with a defensive rating of 99.8 – just behind the Dream and Minnesota Lynx. The Lynx, of course, are the only above .500 team they struggled to defeat in 2025, and that’s their First Round matchup.

On the year, they averaged 77.7 points per game, shooting just 40.7 percent from the field and 32.5 percent from three point range. Most of their points came in the paint, shooting 42.4 percent from that zone – good for third best in the league, and just behind the Indiana Fever and Aces. Scoring was, in short, not their strong suit. Stopping the other team from scoring was, though. Notably, they only allowed other teams to shoot 34.4 percent from the midrange against them this season, and 31.7 percent on above the break three pointers. 

Minnesota was the best above the break three point shooting team in the WNBA this year, shooting 36.9 percent on those attempts. From the midrange, they were even deadlier, shooting a second-best 40.7 from there thanks to contributions from Courtney Williams and Napheesa Collier.  Regardless of this matchup being lopsided on paper, there’s confidence oozing from a team like the Valkyries that cannot be ignored. A lot of that has to do with their chemistry and “togetherness,” something Nakase was seeking out this offseason when assembling this team with Omehaa. Their support for one another has rubbed off on their fanbase, with the Valkyries selling out every single home game they had in 2025. It’s just another notch for the franchise that set out to simply win as many games as possible, and instead, broke multiple records along the way.

This postseason presents a very narrow and tough road ahead for the Valkyries. They’re still without All-Star forward Kayla Thornton for the year, Tiffany Hayes has been ruled out for Game 1 against Minnesota on the road, and they’re only now getting back a key player in Cecilia Zandalasini prior to the series. They also finished the year on a three game losing streak, with two of those losses coming against the Lynx. 

Underdog isn’t necessarily the term to describe Golden State in this series, but they’re going to need to make it a rock fight in order to get anything going against an All-Star cast featuring Collier, Kayla McBride, Alanna Smith, and others. 

Still, this is not a team to completely write off – they’ve shown that multiple times throughout their inaugural season. Minnesota has to hope they can firmly revoke Golden State’s confidence in Game 1. 

“Look, the ultimate goal here for the Golden State Valkyries and from my owner, straight from his mouth, is we would like to win a championship in five years. He said maybe even sooner. With that in mind, you have to have competitive players in order to win a championship,” said Nakase of that initial 11 player pool assembled through the draft.

2025 may not be the championship year for them, but the goal of one within the next five years, as laid out by Joe Lacob, doesn’t seem so far-fetched anymore.