How the red-hot Valkyries stack up against past 10 WNBA Champions analytically

There’s no team in the WNBA hotter than the Golden State Valkyries right now.

At 17-7 on the season, with the wind of a seven-game win streak at their back and their league-best defense propelling them forward, the Valkyries have officially crashed the WNBA title race party, as coach Natalie Nakase has her squad firmly in championship conversations, a feature few predicted entering this season.

With all that being said, how seriously should the league at large take the Valkyries?

For as dominant as they’ve looked at times when the defense is terrorizing opponents, the threes are finding the bottom of the net, and Gabby Williams and Veronica Burton are closing teams out in the fourth, Golden State’s still had its moments of vulnerability.

They’ve yet to beat the Minnesota Lynx and Las Vegas Aces, who sit ahead of them in the standings. They’re prone to scoring droughts that truly dissolve the confidence a pundit could have in this team to go all the way. And maybe most strikingly, the Valkyries are, technically, unproven from a postseason standpoint.

While the only way to find out is to let the season play out, we can look at how Golden State stacks up against past WNBA champions to see how analytically comparable they are to teams that have reached the promised land.

In this article, I’ve collected data from the last ten WNBA champions, dating back to 2016. I compared each champion’s shot diets, shooting percentages, and advanced statistics to the 2026 Valkyries’ statistics as of July 14th.

Obviously, certain statistics skew a certain way depending on specific trends in the WNBA (ex. Teams shot fewer 3-pointers the further back you go), which is why many of these comparisons are contextualized by each team’s regular-season rankings for that statistic.

Additionally, this analytical comparison looked purely at the statistics and did not dive into roster construction and how individual players affected their teams. All stats were obtained through the WNBA’s public statistical database.

With that being said, here is how the Valkyries stack up against the past ten WNBA champions.

Golden State’s championship-level qualities

The Valkyries’ easiest championship-level quality to point out is their defense. They currently hold the best defensive rating in the league at 100.4, holding opponents to a league-low 76.2 points per game. Nine of the last ten champions have boasted a top-six defense, with six of those teams boasting top-three defenses.

And in conjunction with their defensive rating, the Valkyries also hold the second-best net rating this season (+7.0). Only two teams of the last ten championships have had a net-rating outside the top two: the 2021 Chicago Sky and the 2025 Las Vegas Aces, two teams that got hot in the playoffs after coasting in the regular season.

Those are the two obvious championship-level qualities the Valkyries have, but let’s dive a little deeper into how their shot diet compares to these past title teams.

It’s no secret that Golden State shoots a ton of 3-pointers. Their offense is built around 3-point analytics– the expected value of a 3-pointer outweighs the expected value of a 2-pointer.

Hence why 45.0% of the Valkyries’ field goal attempts come from beyond the arc, and 38.7% of their points come from 3-pointers, both of which rank first in not only the WNBA this season, but also among those past ten title teams.

That’s not to say those past ten champions didn’t rely on 3-point analytics.

While not on the Valkyries’ scale of 3-point volume, only the 2017 Lynx, 2021 Sky, and 2020 ranked in the bottom half of the league in %FGAs from beyond the arc. In fact, the last four title-winning teams ranked in the top five in %FGAs 3PT in their respective seasons. Three-point volume is what the elite teams have turned to as of late.

So from that standpoint, the Valkyries’ high three-point rate shot diet is on par with how most of the past ten champions designed their offense.

Where the Valkyries deviate from past champs

But while the Valkyries’ shot diet is that of a champion, the results are not.

While their eighth-ranked offensive rating isn’t the worst thing in the world (107.4), nine of the last ten champions have had a top-four offense. Additionally, the last ten champions have also ranked at least sixth or better in points per game. The Valkyries this season rank 12th at 82.0 points per game.

However, offensive rating and points per game can be deceptive, surface-level statistics. As such, this is where true shooting percentage comes in, an advanced statistic that measures a team or player’s shooting efficiency by accounting for the differences between two-pointers, three-pointers, and free throws.

This season, the Valkyries rank 13th in the league in TS% (53.5%). Eight of the last ten champions ranked in the top three in TS%, with the other two ranking no further than seventh in their respective seasons.

And if you want to get more basic, the Valkyries rank dead last in normal field goal percentage this season. Only the 25′ Aces and 21 Sky ranked outside of the top three in FG% for their respective seasons, and again, both of those teams had notoriously underwhelming regular seasons.

Conclusion

Essentially, the Valkyries have the correct process offensively. Shoot a lot of threes, shoot a lot of high percentage twos, and cut out anything in between. The problem is that they aren’t converting within that shot diet.

And to nail that point home, let’s compare the Valkyries to the most statistically similar championship-winning team of the last ten years: the 2024 New York Liberty.

Like the Valkyries, the Liberty were at the top of the league in 3-point volume, top of the league in defensive rating and net rating, and near the bottom of the league in midrange volume. AKA, two teams on the cutting edge of 3-point analytics with the backbone of an elite defense.

But unlike Golden State so far this season, New York had the efficiency. The Liberty shot 56.1% in true shooting percentage, second-best in the league that season, and 44.8% from the field, third-best that season.

A few factors could be at play here for Golden State and its poor shooting efficiency. For one, the Valkyries’ shot quality hasn’t been the best. For another, they don’t exactly have a heliocentric archetypal player like a Breanna Stewart or A’Ja Wilson, whose gravity can free up their teammates for open looks.

Whatever the case may be, the analytics still point to the Valkyries having a lot of the same traits and processes that the past ten championship-winning teams had when they reached the mountain top. That’s not an easy feat.

It’s just that the one glaring hole is their offense– their shooting efficiency. Time will tell if that’s what holds the Valkyries back or if that’s what they overcome to become an outlier among those past ten title teams.

They’re more than capable of the latter.

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