Valkyries & Dream:Shot by Shot
Game 1 of the Finals, every shot on the court.
The Finals opened Saturday night in San Francisco and the Valkyries took Game 1, 68 to 64. Neither team shot particularly well: between them they made about a third of their shots and fewer than one three pointer in five. In fact, this is the first time since 2003 (where our box scores begin) that both teams shot under 33% in a Finals game.
The rest of this story is told with shot charts, so let me explain those for people who aren't familiar. A shot chart is a map of the court that shows where a team or a player shoots from. They've been used to describe basketball for a while now, and were largely created and popularized by Kirk Goldsberry, a researcher and basketball writer. The idea is simple: every shot happens somewhere on the floor and we plot the data like a map.
There are two kinds of shot charts in this story. A chart of one game shows every shot as a dot: a filled dot went in and a ring didn't. Since teams only take about 70 shots in a single game, it's easy to see and make sense of each one. When we're showing a whole season, though, we need to summarize a whole lot more shots. Over a whole season, we also want to show two things at once: how many shots came from each spot (as the size of the dot) and how well they went in compared to the league (as the color). A big dot in the team's color is a spot they shoot from a lot and shoot well; a big blue one is a spot they shoot from a lot and shoot worse than the league does. A small dot is a spot they rarely shoot from, and a gray one has too few shots around it to say. Hover or tap any part of a court for the numbers behind it.
Let's start by looking at the shots the Valkyries and Dream took in Game 1 of the Finals, each shot plotted as a make or a miss. At first glance, you'll see a lot of misses. This is the first time since the Comets and Liberty in 1999 (combined 29.9%) where both teams shot under a third. You might also notice that both teams tended to shoot either threes or right at the rim, which is a pretty common trend* in both WNBA and NBA regular season basketball. (*There's actually a whole field of study on basketball shot selection analytics if you want to get nerdy about it!)
Both teams shot under a third in Finals Game 1
Now let's look at the same court over a whole season. Each dot is a square of floor two feet on a side, bigger where more shots are taken. The color says how they shoot from that square compared to the league: one ink where they make fewer of those shots than the league does, the other where they make more, and pale where they're about even. A gray dot is a square with too few shots around it to say.
You'll see that the two teams shoot from opposite places. Half of the Dream's shots over the season come at the rim, while the Valkyries take nearly half of theirs from three. The two charts have a different texture, too: the Valkyries' shots are spread over more of the floor, so their chart has more dots, while the Dream's pile up on a few squares under the basket, which is why their biggest dots are right at the rim. The Dream also take a few more shots a game and get to the free-throw line about six more times a game, which is what attacking the rim tends to get you. (Their corner threes, if you're wondering, are mostly Rhyne Howard, Allisha Gray, and Naz Hillmon.) In Game 1 by comparison, the Dream got to the rim less than usual and took about twice their usual share of jumpers because the Valkyries defense is so elite. The Valkyries, on the other hand, shot pretty close to how they've been doing all season, mostly threes and shots at the rim.
The Dream shoot more often at the rim and the Valkyries shoot more threes
Let's quickly compare the Dream and Valkyries shot charts to a few others from the league. As you can see, there are multiple different types of shooting profiles out there. The Mystics shoot at the rim more than anyone and rarely from three, the Wings shoot from mid-range more than anyone, and the Lynx shoot a bit of everything. I'll share more in a future story about league-wide shot profiles, but here's some early data you might find interesting.
Three more ways to shoot: the Mystics at the rim and rarely from three, the Wings from mid-range, and the Lynx from a bit of everywhere
Now let's get back to the WNBA Finals. Gabby Williams took more shots in Game 1 than anyone on either team and scored 26 of the Valkyries' 68 points. Half of her 22 shots were threes, a bigger share than she typically takes over the season. She shoots right around league average, and isn't afraid to keep trying especially when the team needs it. On Saturday she made three of her eleven threes.
Gabby Williams led the Valkyries with 26 points
Allisha Gray usually scores at the rim, but in Game 1 she got there less than usual. Nearly half of her shots over the season come from within eight feet of the basket, and she makes a little more of them than the league does, too. In Game 1, five of her nineteen shots came from the basket, and only one went in. She took eight threes and made one of those, too. She still led the Dream with 19 points, though, on a night when neither team shot all that well.
Allisha Gray led the Dream with 19 points
I'm working on building an interactive shot chart into our stats page so you can explore this kind of data for your favorite teams and players. More on that soon! Otherwise, I hope Game 2 is just as exciting as Game 1. The Valkyries and Dream are an amazing matchup and, with my Lynx out, I'm just happy to watch some great basketball! I'll be back this week with some more WNBA data analytics as the Finals continue on ;)
METHODOLOGYGAMES THRU OCT 17, 2026SHOW THE WORK +HIDE −
- WHERE A SHOT IS
- ESPN's play-by-play places every shot in whole feet across the court and out from the hoop · checked against the distance the play's own text states: within a foot on 93% of this season's shots and within two feet on all of them · a dot sits somewhere inside its foot, since the foot is all the record says · the scorers put every shot at the rim in front of it, which is why the floor between the rim and the baseline holds only corner threes
- A SQUARE OF FLOOR
- on a season court each dot is a square of floor two feet on a side, sized by the shots taken from it · its color compares the shooter's rate from that square with the league's from the same square, on a pair of inks: one deepening from even to eight points under the league or more, the other from even to eight points over or more, pale where even · a square with fewer than twelve shots takes the rate of the ring of squares around it, six feet by six, and one whose ring still holds fewer than twelve draws gray, its size but no comparison · twelve, because the color runs eight points each way and one make moves a rate of twelve by eight, so under twelve a single shot would swing the color across its whole scale · the size scale is not capped: a dot's area is its shots, and every season court of the story shares one scale
- THE ZONES
- at the rim is within eight feet of it · a three is anything from behind the line, which runs three feet in from each sideline and then 22 feet 1¾ inches from the hoop · a jumper is every other shot · on a game court, hover or tap a shot for who took it and what it was; on a season court, a zone for its shots and its rate
- WHICH GAMES COUNT
- the season courts are the regular season only; the All-Star Game and the Commissioner's Cup final are dropped and the Cup's group games kept, because the league counts them · the game courts are Game 1 of the Finals · data frozen at press time
- CREDITS
- Play-by-play, shot locations and box scores: ESPN, via wehoop · The idea of a court of dots sized by shots and colored against the league: Kirk Goldsberry · Crests: the WNBA
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