SAN FRANCISCO — It was everywhere Gabby Williams looked when she drove to Chase Center as a bundle of stress and nerves. A Waymo in a Valkyries wrap. A billboard for the WNBA Finals. Valkyries dribbling on the digital top of the Salesforce Tower. There's no escaping violet and gold in the Bay.
"All I keep thinking is, 'I can't lose,'" Williams said. "I can't lose. I'm on the drive and I'm like, this is the moment. This is my time to give my everything for this community."
She didn't lose. The goggles, Champagne-soaked champion T-shirt and Finals MVP trophy give it away.
Find Williams the rest of the night, and find the Finals trophy. She grasped it tightly in her hands, attached to her in a way no Atlanta Dream defender could. The pair snaked through the player side of velvet violet ropes, into the black-curtained square for championship photos, onto the dais where she wanted to focus not on the naysayers of her career, but those who believed.
She scored 28 of her 30 points in the second half to lift the Valkyries to their first WNBA championship in only their second year as a franchise. She tied Penny Taylor for most points in a winner-take-all Finals game in WNBA history and ceme...