Expansion teams are usually thought to be the underdogs in a league defined by experience. After a few failed seasons, where they often draft overlooked players on the off chance of finding a diamond in the rough, they finally start to climb the trajectory. The Golden State Valkyries were simply different.

After toppling out in the very first playoff round last season, the second-year expansion team is now vying for their first WNBA title already. Behind that success, for the most part, has been their star forward, Gabby Williams. It wasn’t just her duality that set her apart, though. She signed with the team this offseason because she related to them as an underdog. So much so that even though she has been in the league for eight years now, she never really received the acknowledgement a player of her caliber should. But now that she is getting praised by the media, she has a plain mic-drop response for them all.

“The media’s never respected me. I’ve never expected them to. So that’s always been in the back of my head,” Williams said during Finals media day on Friday ahead of Game 1. “I’ve never paid any mind to the media, so if the media’s praising me now, I don’t care.”

In her very first year as a rookie with the Chicago Sky in 2018, Williams became the defensive anchor for her team because that’s what they needed. And while she only got one of 39 votes to end up sixth in the Defensive Player of the Year back then, it still meant that people were noticing her game. But in the ensuing few years until she found herself in Seattle, even that representation got lost somewhere. She finally got into the All-Defensive Second Team in 2022 and finished fifth in the Most Improved Player, but her tussle with the media or the WNBA never really vanished. Things got even more heated in 2023-24.

In 2023, before the season began, she was still playing in the French league with ASVEL. However, with the WNBA’s new prioritization rule that requires all players to complete their offseason commitments before the start of the season — and because she got concussed — she broke her contract with her French team and returned to America to play with the Storm. She played only ten games that season. But this was just the tip of the iceberg after she called the rule “ridiculous.”

The same problem followed her literally five months later, and she simply folded her hand.

“2024 looks like it’s not possible, more so because of prioritization and of course even if I were to come, it would be in August with the Olympics,” Williams said a day after the conclusion of the Storm’s schedule in September 2023. “But 2025, I plan on coming back.”

She did play 12 games with Seattle in 2024. But despite one of her best seasons, where she averaged 10.3 points in 29.3 minutes per game, she realized she wasn’t receiving the same praise as she should because there was a reason.

In that year, she had bashed the league’s salary structure, asking exactly what the latest CBA also aligns with: more money for the players. The next season, after playing all 44 games with the Storm and showing the two-way player that she is, she was finally back on everyone’s radar.

Williams returned to the spotlight, but the underdog mentality kept her moving

She received the All-Defensive First Team and All-Star honors, and finished third behind first-spot tie A’ja Wilson and Alanna Smith for Defensive Player of the Year before moving on to the Valkyries and quite literally changing their fate. But here’s where she may have gotten into a pickle with the media…

You see, she has always been the outspoken one, bringing topics to the table that rightly begin debates. So, while she never really outrightly spoke anything about the WNBA media, she also knew they were still treating her as a nobody. And that feeling extended to her current team as well.

“We ’bout to have some bandwagoners because we ain’t getting no love all season,” she said on October 9, following Golden State’s Game 3 victory over the Aces. “Nobody believed in us, but honestly it made us smile cause we were like all we need is each other, we just need to believe in each other… We just felt that we had something worth fighting for.”

Despite Williams’ experience, she has been viewed as a role player. But for the first time ever, she is finding out what her fellow WNBA players really think of her.

Gabby Williams gets messages from WNBA players after a historic run with the Valkyries

Williams helped lead the Valkyries to a 32-12 regular-season record and the second seed in the playoffs before they eliminated the Dallas Wings and defending champions Las Vegas Aces to book their place in the Finals.

She averaged a career-best 14.4 points per game in the regular season, alongside 3.3 rebounds and 2.2 assists, before taking her production up to another level in the postseason, where she averaged 22.7 points, 4.8 rebounds and four assists per game while shooting 40.5% from beyond the arc.

The Valkyries’ forward also earned her second consecutive All-Star selection and finished runner-up in the Defensive Player of the Year voting behind Angel Reese. So in the wake of Golden State’s Cinderella run, the recognition has finally caught up with her performances.

“But what has touched me the most has been… Like I’m hugging Jewell (Loyd) after the game, when we beat them (the Aces), and she’s like, ‘Hey, this is your moment now,'” Gabby Williams said, recalling October 9, when the Valkyries completed a 3-0 sweep of the Las Vegas Aces. “Paige (Bueckers) reaching out to me, AC reaching out to me, Sue Bird.

“All these players who have seen closely what I’ve gone through my entire career, who have reached out to me and support… that’s really touched me because they’ve seen kind of my path through it.”

The WNBA Finals will now offer an even bigger stage for the Valkyries to build on their momentum and attract even more national attention, as they became the first women’s sports team to generate more than $100 million in revenue.

For Gabby Williams, however, the growing spotlight is not what defines this moment; it’s the respect of those who have witnessed her journey firsthand. As she prepares to lead Golden State against Atlanta in its first Finals appearance, she has little interest in changing her stance just because the outside world has finally caught up.

The Valkyries host the Atlanta Dream at Chase Center in a few hours to kick off the Finals series.