Warriors past and present laud Valkyries' championship, Gabby Williams' ‘Steph-esque' performance
· Yahoo Sports
Chris Mullin knows legend. The basketball Hall of Famer has seen legends in the Bay Area, after all, for the better part of four decades. Run-TMC. We Believe. The Stephen Curry era.
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He saw another, on Saturday night, watching from the television at home as the Golden State Valkyries' Gabby Williams sent Chase Center into pandemonium in a Game 7 championship clincher.
"It was, without comparing, Steph-esque," Mullin told the Chronicle on Sunday, sitting courtside at Chase before a Golden State Warriors tipoff against the Los Angeles Clippers. "Made those three threes in a row, and then just started - just took over. I mean, it's the most points ever, in playoff history in the second half, 28 points. And they needed all of 'em."
"I mean, superstar performance, in the clutch," Mullin marveled, a few words later. "So, pretty amazing."
The 63-year-old Mullin is just one in a long list of former and current Warriors who've become enraptured by the transformation occurring inside their own walls, the Ballhalla Effect that has now brought a championship back to the Bay in just the second season of the Valkyries' existence. In Denver, last Monday, a few Warriors fell distracted away from pregame responsibilities by a television in the visiting training room playing the Valkyries' Game 5 win over the Atlanta Dream; a couple others, as Curry said, had the game pulled up on their phones at their lockers.
"It's an incredible story," Curry said then, last week. "I mean, I don't even know how to put it. It's a franchise on the brink of a championship, and the collection of athletes, the different stories they have, and the fact that there's such an identity that's been formed in two years and the fan base, and representing the Bay, it's incredible."
A large Warriors contingent, too, was roaring for the Valkyries firsthand at Chase on Saturday night. Former Golden State point guard Chris Paul drifted through the halls, postgame. Festus Ezeli, a former Warriors champion, embraced a host of Valkyries running in Champagne-and-wine-fueled jubilation. Golden State reserves Will Richard and Georges Niang sat among the people in the lower sections at Chase, and Draymond Green and Yaxel Lendeborg watched courtside next to team owner Joe Lacob, Williams bringing the WNBA Finals trophy over to Lendeborg for a moment postgame.
Caught, all, in a lasting jubilation and suspended belief in the Bay.
"It's been a long time coming," Mullin said. "I mean, this was, from day one, in my mind, the ideal place to have a WNBA franchise. They got it done, but I thought it was a match made in heaven. Look at Stanford, and Cal. There's some, historically, been some great dynasties in women's basketball.
"I think Joe Lacob and his group knew that, because of his connection to Stanford, moving down that way. Just took a while for it to happen. But still, to do it in two years … still trumps everything."
The Warriors, now, marched back into Chase on Sunday for a sleepy evening game against a floundering Clippers team, inside an area that had just been coated in Champagne. These are the last vestiges of Lacob's first championship franchise, carefully managed for maximum preservation: Curry and Green both sat Sunday for rest, ahead of a back-to-back against Phoenix on Monday.
Perhaps, though, the Valkyries' meteoric run sparked a little something.
"We've all been following it," Warriors coach Steve Kerr said pregame. "And so, more than anything, we're just excited. I mean, it is a great reminder of how fun that is. And we'd love to do it again."
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