The WNBA Finals Game 6 that unfolded under the bright lights of State Farm Arena on Thursday afternoon was supposed to be a coronation for one team and a funeral for another, yet it became something far more thrilling, because the Atlanta Dream, facing elimination and trailing three games to two, produced their finest performance of the season, beat the Golden State Valkyries eighty to sixty-nine, and forced the first deciding Game 7 in the entire history of the WNBA Finals.
That piece of history is what makes the WNBA Finals Game 6 matter beyond a single scoreline, since last season was the first in which the league stretched its championship series to a best-of-seven format, and now, in only the second year of that format, the competition has delivered the winner-take-all finale every sport dreams of, with a first-time champion guaranteed no matter who survives Saturday night in San Francisco.
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WNBA Finals Game 6: a 13-0 burst that changed everything
The WNBA Finals Game 6 turned on a breathtaking burst of scoring early in the first quarter, when, after the Valkyries had edged ahead six to five, Atlanta rattled off thirteen unanswered points between the seven-minute and four-minute marks, with five points apiece from Allisha Gray and Jordin Canada, to seize a nineteen to five lead they would never surrender, and from that moment the Dream played like a team that had decided elimination was simply not an option.
Gray, a ten-year veteran who has battled a hand injury throughout the postseason, led the way with twenty-three points, including five three-pointers, while Rhyne Howard added twenty-one and Angel Reese recorded a fifteen-point, fourteen-rebound double-double with six assists, and the Dream, who had suffered their lowest scoring games of the Finals in the back-to-back defeats of Games 4 and 5, suddenly rediscovered their shooting touch, connecting on thirteen three-pointers while holding Golden State to just twenty-six points in the entire first half.
Atlanta’s biggest lead reached twenty-five points, and although the Valkyries, led by Gabby Williams with twenty-six points and Tiffany Hayes with fifteen, fought back in the final minutes to pull within seventy-seven to sixty-six on Laeticia Amihere’s free throws with under two minutes remaining, a three-pointer from Gray, after Williams had cut the gap to seventy-seven to sixty-nine, sealed the result, with the quarter scores telling the story of control, thirty-two to fifteen, fourteen to eleven, seventeen to twenty-one, and seventeen to twenty-two.
WNBA Finals Game 6: the matinee, the sellout and the road ahead
The WNBA Finals Game 6 carried its own off-court drama before a ball was even thrown, because the game was moved to a much-criticised twelve-thirty in the afternoon tip-off and switched to State Farm Arena, after the Atlanta Hawks’ home game against the Cleveland Cavaliers on Thursday evening made the usual evening slot impossible, while the Dream’s regular home, the Gateway Center Arena, seats only around three thousand five hundred people, far too small for a Finals elimination game.
Despite the awkward timing, the Dream announced a sellout on Wednesday, and a near-capacity crowd roared them to what head coach Karl Smesko called, afterwards, a performance built on a simple mentality, telling reporters that his team was happy to have won but knew the job was not done, that they would take the next day to prepare and make adjustments, and that they expected to go out and play great in the decider, words that captured a dressing room refusing to celebrate a rescue as though it were a championship.
The decisive Game 7 will now be played at the Chase Center in San Francisco on Saturday night at eight Eastern time, where Golden State, still only in their second season in the league, will enjoy home advantage but must recover from a shooting night in which they made just seven of twenty-seven three-point attempts, barely twenty-six percent, while Atlanta, who did not trail after the opening minute on Thursday, will chase the first championship in franchise history against opponents hunting exactly the same prize.
For the league, the WNBA Finals Game 6 was a gift, because a series that had threatened to end quietly in six games now ends with everything on the line, in front of a national audience, between two teams with nothing left to lose, and whatever happens on Saturday, the Dream have already ensured that the two thousand and twenty-six Finals will be remembered as the year the championship finally went the distance, which is exactly why the WNBA Finals Game 6 will be replayed and retold for years to come.
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