Gabby Williams had two points at halftime of the first Game 7 in WNBA Finals history. By the end of the night, the Golden State Valkyries had beaten the Atlanta Dream 68-63, and she held both the championship and the Finals MVP trophy. Then a reporter asked her what it took, from day one of training camp, to get there. She did not talk about her points. She talked about everyone who had written her team off.

“Man, all it took was good people,” Williams said in a post-game interview. “That’s it. All we heard last year, ‘We don’t have no stars. We don’t have no talent.’ We got good people. We got winners. We got people who are ready to put their bodies on the floor to win a game. They don’t care about scoring. They just want to play defense and rebound and just do whatever it takes. And we just built a beautiful culture here.”

Williams was talking about last year. The Valkyries were a brand-new expansion team with no star and no history. Still, they became the first expansion team in WNBA history to make the playoffs in its first season, although the Minnesota Lynx swept them in the first round. 

Many people also laughed when owner Joe Lacob promised a title within five years.

The doubts did not stop this season. After Game 1 of the Finals, former ESPN host Linda Cohn said fans were treating the Dream as the sure winner. She pointed out that the Valkyries were the No. 2 seed, had swept the defending champion Las Vegas Aces and had won Game 1 while shooting just 32%.

Williams said the culture was the answer, and it began on the first day of camp. 

Coach Natalie Nakase would not let players pick up a ball for three days. Those days were all defense, and Golden State went on to allow a league-low 75.1 points per game. In a first-round game against Dallas, Kayla Thornton pulled three teammates into a huddle to take one calm breath, and the Valkyries came back to win. 

In the Finals, Nakase changed her starters after Game 3, and no one complained. They won the next two games.

Nakase called Williams a humble star who asked for just one thing: a team that cared about people. Williams said Nakase believed in players who had been left unprotected or cut by other teams, based only on their effort.

That attitude showed in how Williams played. She was named Finals MVP after averaging 19.6 points, 3.6 rebounds, 2.7 assists and 2.6 steals in the series. During the sweep of the Aces, Lacob called her the best player in the world.

Game 7 was her best night. The Valkyries trailed 30-24 at halftime, and Williams had two points. Nakase told her to be patient, and Williams said she listened. “I love moments like this,” she said. Then she scored 15 points in the third quarter, including three straight threes, and Golden State led 45-44 going into the fourth.

Late in the fourth, with the game tied, she hit a deep three to make it 60-57 with about two minutes left. The Valkyries never trailed again. She blocked Jordin Canada late, and the crowd chanted “MVP! MVP!” as she made two free throws.

She finished with 30 points on 10-of-23 shooting, four threes, four blocks and two steals. Twenty-eight of her points came in the second half, a Finals record for one half. Atlanta scored 33 as a team in that half.

It was her first WNBA title. She had won in college and overseas, but she lost the 2024 Olympic gold medal game by one point and lost to the U.S. again at the FIBA World Cup in September. This time, she finished the job. 

A year after people said the Valkyries had no stars, they had a champion, a Finals MVP and a simple answer: good people.