The Golden State Valkyries came to Atlanta with a chance to win the 2026 WNBA Championship. The Atlanta Dream, meanwhile, entered Game 6 with one last chance to keep their title hopes alive. And they played like it. They set the tone right from the start, scoring early and getting defensive stops. About halfway through the first quarter, they had a 14-5 lead, which eventually ballooned to a 25-point lead. 

Before this game, the Valkyries had only allowed the Dram to score more than 65 points once—they put up 97 points in a big Game 3 victory in Atlanta. Giving up 32 points in the first quarter alone was very uncharacteristic for the number-one defense in the WNBA. The Valkyries knew the Dream would come ready to play extremely hard, and yet they didn’t seem quite prepared for it.

That first quarter set the tone and created a deficit too large for the Valkyries to overcome despite a much better second half, which they won 43-34. 

“They scored 31 points in the first quarter,” Veronica Burton said about the Valkyries’ slow start in the postgame media availability, per a live stream on the WNBA’s YouTube channel. “That’s unacceptable.” 

She also added, “There needs to be a sense of urgency. It’s the WNBA Finals.” 

Head coach Natalie Nakase also used the word “unacceptable” to describe her team’s start. Gabby Williams also noted that the team “didn’t come ready,” which is a concerning assessment with the championship on the line. After all, if you can’t “come ready” for a chance to end the season and win a championship, when will you play with the right energy? A lot was made about the game’s early start time, but Burton, Williams, and Nakase all said it had nothing to do with their slow start and that the Dream had to play at the same time. 

The Championship Will Be Decided in a Historic Game 7

Since the Valkyries couldn’t finish the job in Atlanta, the series will go back to Ballhalla for Game 7. It will be the first Game 7 in WNBA history. The league changed its finals format from a best-of-five series to a best-of-seven series ahead of last season, but the Las Vegas Aces swept the Phoenix Mercury in four games, so we never got to see the full extent of a best-of-seven series in the WNBA. The Valkyries have sold out every home game so far, so it should be an electric atmosphere for the biggest game of the season. 

No matter the outcome, the WNBA will crown a first-time champion. The Valkyries, of course, are just in their second season, and the Dream missed out on a championship three times in the 2010s, losing once to the Seattle Storm and twice to the Minnesota Lynx.