Hello, hoopheads! The third meeting between the Golden State Valkyries (28-11) and New York Liberty (23-16) this season looked a hell of a lot like the first two, with the Valkyries dictating the game’s tempo and making 13-of-33 (39.4%) from deep while watching the Liberty go just 7-for-31 (22.6%) in a 79-60 rout to sweep the season series. Cecilia Zandalasini was the top scorer with 20 points while going 4-for-10 from beyond the arc, and Gabby Williams added 16 points and went 4-of-8, with those two combining to make more triples than New York did as a team. If you’re a regular reader, however, you aren’t going to be surprised when I tell you that Veronica Valkyrie (Burton) was the best player on the floor, keeping the game at that molasses-slow tempo Golden State prefers and racking up 13 assists without a turnover. That was the fifth time V2 has had double-digit assists without a turnover in her 85-game Valkyries career, tied for the second-most such games any player has had in WNBA history, including playoffs. Only Sue Bird had more 10-assist/0-turnover games, with eight of them, while Courtney Vandersloot has also had five (each of them had one in the playoffs). Behind Burton and Sloot are Dawn Staley and Ticha Penicheiro with four each, while the players with exactly three are Jordin Canada and Lindsay Whalen. I’ve gotten some pushback at times when I’ve said that Burton is currently the best point guard in the WNBA, but I keep on saying it because she keeps on doing things only done by the best point guards the league has seen.
As for my beloved-but-buttwhipped Liberty, the loss means they’ll need help from either Dallas or Washington to avoid the No. 8 seed, but perhaps 8 is better than 7 anyway. The Liberty have been competitive in their previous encounters with the league-leading Minnesota Lynx, splitting the pair, and more importantly, the second-place Valkyries are their Purple Kryptonite. I think that’s largely because the Valkyries have as clearly defined an identity as any team in the league, built around combining all-out defensive effort for 40 minutes with Burton orchestrating the league’s slowest and most 3-point-happy offense (both of those things have happened both years they’ve existed). The Libs, on the other hand, have no identity. They’ll happily play Indiana’s track meet or Golden State’s slugfest or whatever Chicago wants to do on Saturday. They’re along for the ride, hoping their talent can overmatch you, and in a lot of games, it can. Those are just the ones when they play non-playoff teams and the likes of Indiana, who can’t make them pay for aimless possessions wasted on erratic passing and bad shot selection. The Valkyries might as well have been built in a lab to punish those exact things.
I would love to see this Liberty team make a real commitment to getting a piece of the paint on every possession, given it owns the league’s second-best 2-point percentage (55.0%), top free throw percentage (84.8%) and it, ya know, employs Jonquel Jones and Breanna Stewart. It also employs Sabrina Ionescu, who is making 53.5% of her shots inside the arc and 30.1% of them outside of it, but has taken 52.1% of her shots from her weaker area. The Liberty are at their best when those three players are attacking the rim and getting to the line, which seems like stating the most obvious fucking thing in August 2026, and yet I don’t think the Liberty recognize this about themselves. Even if they do, I have no faith in the team’s ability to make that kind of commitment, because head coach Chris DeMarco Unremarkable Coach Man hasn’t yet proven capable of getting this team to show up and play hard, let alone with purpose. In fairness to Unremarkable Coach Man, Sandy Brondello fell victim to the exact same issues last year in her Liberty swansong, but in fairness to the world’s greatest wearer of jean jackets, this guy doesn’t have two WNBA championships and I frankly don’t give a shit that he was there when Steve Kerr won titles in the MNBA. Hoops is hoops, but being an assistant isn’t being a head coach.
Tonight’s schedule features four games, but frankly none of them are all that compelling and I had a Liberty rant in me after that hogwash last night. All four games feature a playoff team matching up against a non-playoff team, a scenario which has produced a 55-6 (.902) record for the playoff-bound since July 13, three of the four games also feature the playoff team playing at home, and a different three feature the playoff team taking the court for the 40th time this season, thus becoming the first teams to head into the FIBA World Cup break. The two early tips in ION’s doubleheader see the Portland Fire (15-23) visit the Atlanta Fire (25-13) and the Connecticut Sun (10-28) visit the Indiana Fever (25-14) (both games 7:30 ET, ION/League Pass), with Atlanta looking to stay ahead of Indiana in the loss column and thus maintain its tenuous hold on home-court advantage in what would currently be a Fever-Dream of a first-round playoff matchup with Atlanta as the No. 4 seed and Indiana as the No. 5 seed. The Fever will be the very first team to head into the World Cup break after tonight’s game, while Atlanta wraps up its first 40 games with a visit from Minnesota on Sunday afternoon in which Indiana will presumably be rooting intently for the Lynx.
Sitting just a half-game ahead of the Dream, but functionally 1.5 games up due to the head-to-head tiebreaker, are the reigning champs, who will be in action tonight when the Toronto Tempo (11-27) visit the Las Vegas Aces (26-13) (10:00 ET, ION/League Pass). Las Vegas will be taking the court for the first time since a 10-point win over Toronto on Sunday in Vancouver, but unfortunately also for the first time since confirming what everyone who watched that game feared with yesterday’s announcement that NaLyssa Smith will miss the rest of the season. The Aces have nothing but non-playoff teams left on the schedule, so they have a bit of runway to adjust to life without Smith before the playoffs begin, but there’s no doubt she’s going to be missed.
Last but not least, the Washington Mystics (24-15) visit the Los Angeles Sparks (13-25) (10:00 ET, ION/League Pass) looking to head into the World Cup break by sweeping a back-to-back after overcoming a 10-point second-half deficit in a win at Phoenix last night. That win has the Mystics on the inside track to the No. 6 seed, but a slip-up would drop them back into a loss-column tie with the Liberty and Dallas Wings (23-16) and bring tiebreakers into the mix. A three-way Liberty/Mystics/Wings tie would give the Liberty the No. 6 seed, Washington the No. 7 seed and Dallas the No. 8 seed, at least as of today. All three teams went 3-3 in the head-to-head matchup — New York was 2-1 against Washington and 1-2 against Dallas, which was 1-2 against Washington — and thus the initial tie would be broken by records against winning opponents. Dallas is 7-15 (.318), Washington is 9-11 (.450) and New York is 9-10 (.474). The Liberty still have three games against winning teams to get through while Washington has one, so that tiebreaker could swing in the Mystics’ direction, but the simplest answer is just don’t lose again and it won’t be an issue. The good news, from my perspective: if the three-way tiebreaker goes to Washington for the 6-seed, Dallas would win the subsequent two-team tiebreaker for the 7-seed, so the Libs avoid the Valkyries either way and I can root for Purple Kryptonite to sap away everyone else’s strength.