The Valkyries Believe In Second Chances

ATLANTA — The Golden State Valkyries’ most valuable player on Saturday afternoon finished with just four points, though by the standards of Kiah Stokes, that qualifies as a scoring outburst. A player with a zero-points-on-zero-field-goal-attempts-in-30-minutes performance to her name in these Finals, Stokes looked disconcertingly ready to fire in the first quarter of Game 4 in Atlanta, the Valkyries desperate after a pair of offensive disasters in Games 2 and 3. Usually when a pass finds Stokes wide open in the corner, you can practically hear a “wrong answer, try again!” buzzer sound as she swings it back to the top of the key. But when Veronica Burton drove the paint and kicked it out to Stokes a minute into the game, the center didn’t think twice about taking the shot. A miss in the end, yes, but a startling sight all the same. After the game, Stokes told reporters that her “aggression” in the form of five first-quarter field goal attempts wasn’t really part of the plan. She had no designs on being a hero, no illusions about what her offensive contribution in the game was going to be. “For me, if you shoot it, it’s a chance to get a rebound and another possession,” she said. In Golden State’s 67-62 series-tying win against the Atlanta Dream on Saturday, that’s basically what every field goal attempt felt like: a chance for more field goal attempts. The Valkyries pulled down 13 offensive rebounds, eight of them thanks to Stokes, and forced 18 Dream turnovers to get the possession math working in their favor again—a strength of theirs usually, but a struggle in their last two games. The series returns to San Francisco for Game 5 on Monday before heading back to Atlanta for a Game 6 on Thursday.

Read it at Defector ↗

← Front page