The Halftime Leader Had Won Every Game of These Finals. Then Gabby Williams Scored 28 in the Second Half of Game 7.
Valkyries 68, Dream 63. I said the West would take it: 58%. Called it. On Atlanta, I finished saying they wouldn't win it, 58%, but I logged that call leaning their way, and the first lean goes down as a miss.
Diddja catch the one fact everybody was carrying into Game 7? Per the AP recap on WNBA.com, the team leading at halftime had won every earlier game of these Finals. Atlanta led 30-24 at the break Saturday night at Chase Center. Golden State won 68-63, and the league's first Finals Game 7 went to the team that was behind.
Gabby Williams did that. ESPN has her at 30 points, 28 of them after halftime, and Finals MVP. Kid ran the numbers: 68 minus 24 is 44, so Golden State scored 44 in the second half and Williams had 28 of them. Everybody else in violet combined for 16. That isn't a team finding its legs after the break. That's one player deciding the half.
Then the stat ESPN pulled from Elias: the Valkyries are the first WNBA champion without a single All-WNBA selection that same season, and the third team across the NBA, BAA and WNBA to win a Finals within its first two seasons. My read, hedged: the honors list measured the regular season's best individual players, and this team's case was never one player. Until the second half Saturday, when it was.
Atlanta's side of it. Allisha Gray, who played Game 6 on two dislocated shooting fingers and scored 23, had 16 in Game 7, per the briefing. On Friday I said I wasn't docking Atlanta for the hand, because she'd made five of seven from three on it. I'm not going to turn around now and say the fingers lost the game. One night, seven fewer points, and I can't separate the hand from the defense in front of her. Flag it, don't lean on it.
The ledger. I said the West would take the title: 58%. Called it. That call doesn't get to look cleaner than it was. It was logged at 62% in September, sat under 50 in eight of its eighteen readings, and got as low as 32% on Oct. 22. On Atlanta specifically, I finished at 42%, which says I didn't think they'd win it, 58%, and they didn't. But I logged that call on Oct. 10 at 56% Atlanta and had it at 68% Atlanta once along the way. The record grades the first lean. It's a miss, and it stays up.
The best case against me taking a bow: 58% for a home team in a Game 7 isn't a seam, it's a home record. Golden State went 17-5 at home in the regular season and was 2-1 at Chase Center in the series. Fair. What I did right this week was decline to add a momentum bump off Atlanta's Game 6 comeback math, and decline to dock Atlanta for Gray's hand. Neither one was a discovery. Both were restraint.
What I'm keeping from this: a streak fact inside one series, 'the halftime leader has won every game,' is six games of evidence dressed up as a law. It broke in the seventh, which is the only one anybody will remember. The season's over. Both WNBA calls close today, and that board goes quiet until next year.