SAN FRANCISCO — The Golden State Valkyries have a shot quality problem. Or maybe they don’t. That depends on who you ask and whether the ball happened to go through the hoop.
After Tuesday night’s 81-75 loss to the league-leading Minnesota Lynx, head coach Natalie Nakase and I had a spirited back-and-forth at the postgame podium about exactly that. The Valkyries went 4-of-22 in the fourth quarter. A week earlier in Seattle, they shot 1-of-16 in the final frame and nearly blew a 15-point lead. So I asked Nakase whether she views the tough shot quality as a trend worth worrying about, and whether the Lynx defense was doing something specific to disrupt their rhythm.
Her answer came in the form of a question.
“If we had made our free throws, would you have asked me the same question?” she said. The Valkyries shot 11-of-17 from the line in a five-point game. Six misses.
I told her I probably would have brought up the 4-of-22 anyway, because it’s become a pattern. She nodded but pushed back with a philosophy she’s preached since Day One.
“What do we rely on?” Nakase asked me.
“Defense,” I answered.
“Because why?”
“It fuels the offense?” I guessed, nodding to something Gabby Williams has said before. Nakase shook her head like I was half right.
“Sometimes you just can’t control it going in all the time, especially making that three,” she said. It’s a core belief of hers: good defense is controllable. Shotmaking, not so much. Even Stephen Curry hits only 48.9 percent of his wide-open threes. That’s barely a coin flip.
Controlling what you can control
Nakase pointed to the sideline out-of-bounds play late in the fourth quarter, when the Valkyries were down five. She liked the call. She liked the personnel. They executed it and Cecilia Zandalasini buried a three, capping a 23-point night. That’s the stuff Nakase focuses on — the process, not the result.
“I also look at it the other way,” she said. “If we probably would have got a couple more stops, then we’d be singing a different tune. But I understand. I’ll say this: we’re not trying to miss shots in the fourth.”
She’s not wrong. Defense is more controllable. Getting the right play call and the right players on the floor is controllable. The Lynx have the league’s best defense. That part is less controllable.
But here’s where I pushed back a little. If you can control the process enough to get Zandalasini a wide-open look off a SLOB, why can’t you do that more often? More coin flips, more bites at the apple. The percentages have to eventually tilt your way.
“We had wide-open looks even before that, and we missed,” Nakase countered. “Ja [Salaun], she had a beautiful shot. So yeah, we got control [some things] better, like we’re going to practice our free throws. And then defensively, if some of those calls weren’t going the wrong way, maybe they wouldn’t have shot 23 throws. I think that’s something for sure on the film we could definitely take a look at.”
Where the truth probably lands
Honestly, I think the answer sits somewhere in the middle. I’m not the one in that locker room, so I’m willing to let it lean toward Nakase’s side. You don’t want to be a team that lives and dies by offense. But the Valkyries also have the second-worst shot diet in the league. Their isolation-heavy crunch-time offense doesn’t generate easy looks. The Zandalasini three proves they can manufacture good shots when they’re intentional about it. The more often they do that, the more dependable the offense becomes.
Nakase never definitively said whether the tough shot quality is a concern. She didn’t say yes and she didn’t say no. Read between the lines and you get the sense she doesn’t think it is. At 10-6, this isn’t a crisis. But if fourth-quarter scoring stays this ugly, the Valkyries will eventually have to look their offense in the mirror and ask what they can change.
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