A NewWNBAChampion

So how do they compare? I put the two regular seasons side by side according to the eight numbers I'd want to know before a series, four for offense and four for defense, and ranked each one against the other thirteen teams in the league. On each row, the team that ranks better is shaded in its color. A "trip" is one trip down the court with the ball, so "points per 100 trips" is just how much a team scores when you give both teams the same number of chances.

At a glance, the Dream have the better offense and the Valkyries have the better defense. The Dream score more, shoot better, and get more of their own misses back. The Valkyries give up the fewest points in the league (by a lot), make teams miss more than anyone, and almost never turn the ball over.

Now, let's look at how each team actually scores. Nearly half of the Valkyries' shots are threes (44.6%, the most in the league) and they shoot them well, too, at 34.4%. What they don't do is get to the free-throw line a whole lot.

The Dream are almost the opposite. They get a lot of their points from the free-throw line because they attack on offense. They also rebound their own misses better than almost anyone. The Dream run, too, with 11.9 fast-break points a game to the Valkyries' 6.8. Taken together, it looks like one team gets their space and shoots and the other drives, draws contact, and gets second chances.

One more difference, and it's the one you'll notice first when you watch. The Dream have stars, and the Valkyries have a bench. Nobody on Golden State's roster averages fifteen points a game, but 44% of their points come from players who didn't start, the most in the league by a mile. The Dream's bench only scores 20% in comparison. Janelle Salaün is the best example: 12.7 points a night without starting a single game, which is how she won Sixth Player of the Year.

That matters in a seven-game series because of minutes. The Dream's starters play 78% of their minutes, the most of any team in the league, and the Finals schedule has a game every other day.

Based on all the stats we've seen so far, these two teams are matched up really well, so I wanted to dig deeper. They've already played three times this season and the Valkyries won all three, but their two most recent meetings came down to the last few minutes, which is exactly what I think a Finals between the two best defenses in the league could look like.

So, I went through every game this season and pulled out the ones that were close late: within five points with five minutes left in the fourth quarter. Then, I looked at how each team showed up in those minutes.

Part of the reason for this last-five-minutes performance is who takes the shots. Remember the Valkyries' depth in scoring? Late in a close game, they tend to stop doing that. Gabby Williams took almost twice as many shots and trips to the line in the last five minutes of close games this season as anyone else on the roster. The Dream spread theirs around between Allisha Gray, Rhyne Howard, Jordin Canada, and Angel Reese. Ironically, the team with the stars shares the ball late and the team with the deep bench gives it to one player. We'll have to see if this holds true in the Finals.