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Reporting from CHASE CENTER
After 18 days off and a month away from Chase Center, the Golden State Valkyries got back to their winning ways Friday night, beating the Portland Fire 82-66.
Laeticia Amihere and Kaitlyn Chen each scored a game-high 17 points off the bench, a career high for Amihere, the fourth-year forward out of South Carolina. Chen added a career-high five 3-pointers. As a group, the Valkyries bench finished with 43 points.
Even with time off for the FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup, Golden State kept working. Friday’s 16-point victory showcased a team ready for a long playoff push.
Chen said the two weeks of practice time were well spent:
“I feel like over the last two weeks, where we just had practices, we put in a lot of really good work. I feel like our practices were very intentional, and we really focused on ourselves and prepping ourselves for these last four games and the playoffs.”
The win was the Valkyries’ 30th of the season (30-11) and lifted them within a game of a drooping Minnesota, which lost 93-81 at home to New York on Friday night, its third straight loss in a skid that began with Golden State’s 80-66 win at Target Center on Aug. 24.
The Lynx (31-10) have beaten Golden State in three of four meetings this year. And with the Valkyries 1-9 all time against Minnesota, playoffs included, the top seed would seem the Lynx’s to lose. They own the head-to-head tiebreaker and would clinch with any combination of just two Lynx wins or Valkyries losses.
But the closing schedule favors Golden State, which finishes against three eliminated teams. Minnesota? The Lynx finish on the road at Connecticut (10-31), then Indiana (27-14). Twice, once away and once at home.
Head coach Natalie Nakase wasn’t interested in celebrating the milestone. Instead, she praised the sellout crowd of 18,064 — the team’s 43rd consecutive regular-season sellout — that welcomed Golden State back from the long midseason break:
“We have now understood that we have responsibilities for Ballhalla. We want to do this for Ballhalla, for everyone who comes to our games, for everyone who’s watching … And when you have that type of purpose, when it’s beyond ourselves, I think that drives us even more every time.”
Golden State was without leading scorer Gabby Williams (14.3 points per game), starting forward Cecilia Zandalasini and Janelle Salaün, the WNBA’s top bench scorer, after the trio played in the World Cup. None of the absences were injury-related; all three were held out for reconditioning.
Nakase started Kaila Charles and Tiffany Hayes in their place.
Golden State showed some rust early, missing its first seven shots until Kayla Thornton scored an uncontested bucket in the paint.
But the team’s main strength — stifling defense allowing a WNBA-low 75.4 points per game — showed up early, limiting Portland to two made shots through the first half of the opening quarter.
Charles had Ballhalla rocking when she blocked Holly Winterburn, recovered the ball and went coast-to-coast for a layup. The ultimate hustle play from the sixth-year pro out of Maryland.
Still, despite four turnovers, 39 percent shooting and a deficit as large as six points, Portland led 20-19 after one quarter.
Valkyries rookie Justė Jocytė started perfect, hitting her first two 3-pointers to put Golden State back in front early in the second quarter. She finished with a career-high nine points, all on 3-pointers.
Jocytė’s playing time has been a point of discussion among Valkyries fans all season; she was the franchise’s first-ever draft pick in 2025. Friday’s game was just her 15th appearance of the 2026 campaign.
Amihere said the locker room has never doubted her:
“Everybody on the team knows what she’s capable of. Once she gets the opportunity, she does exactly what she needs to do, and it just keeps giving her confidence to be herself.”
Golden State took a 40-30 lead into halftime. Thornton led all scorers with nine points, but the Valkyries bench made the difference in the first 20 minutes: Jocytė, Chen and Amihere had six points apiece, and those 18 bench points outscored Portland’s starting five by three.
Portland had no answer for Amihere in the third quarter, as she added seven more points and the Valkyries’ lead grew to as many as 18. A Chen 3-pointer off the dribble late in the quarter had Ballhalla on its feet again.
The lead reached 26 in the fourth quarter, letting Nakase give the end of her bench some run to close out the contest. Amihere capped her night with an emphatic rejection of Charisma Osborne‘s layup attempt, sending her teammates on the bench into a frenzy.
Nakase has a name for it:
“When she blocks it, she sends it. That’s the LA block. She has the blocks that go into the stands.”
Up Next
Golden State hosts the Seattle Storm (8-33) on Saturday at Chase Center in the regular-season home finale. Tipoff is 6 p.m. on Prime. The Valkyries then visit Portland on Tuesday at 7 p.m.
Notes
Burton’s record night: Veronica Burton finished with a franchise-record six steals, a career high and the second-most by any WNBA player this season. Chen said she wasn’t surprised, having seen it plenty in practice:
“She’s just like always there. Like when you think that you have an open pass, it’s not there. Trust me, I know. I’ve done it in practice, and she just comes out of nowhere and steals it.”
Five straight: Holding Portland to 66 made Golden State the first WNBA team since the 2021 Connecticut Sun to hold five straight opponents to 70 points or fewer. The Valkyries forced 22 turnovers, tying a season high, and scored 17 points off them.
Bench mob: The league leader in bench scoring, Golden State got 40 or more points from its reserves for the 16th time this season. The Valkyries are 12-4 in those games.
Tanaka introduced: Kokoro Tanaka, the Valkyries’ third-round pick (38th overall) in the 2026 draft, was introduced before tipoff on Japanese Heritage Night and energized the home crowd. Tanaka plays for the Eneos Sunflowers in the Premier division of the Women’s Japan Basketball League, and she led Japan in scoring at the World Cup with 14.8 points per game. Chen said the night meant a lot:
“I feel like it’s really special, the Asian American community here in San Francisco or in the Bay Area and in LA always shows up and we want to be a really good example.”
