A Brick Building at Ballhalla, West Bay, Week One
For the first Valkyrie game, my daughter and I took BART to Powell St, then followed a pathway of little basketball decals from the faregates into the new-ish Muni T line station, where you can flash your game ticket and ride to Chase Center for free in a sea of lavender shirts. The pepperoni pizza box directly under my nose was the closest I would get to food that evening. The Valkyries fought valiantly but lost to the LA Sparks.
The following Wednesday, I decided it was safe to park at West Oakland and shorten the trip (weeknight, fewer fans overall and thus more parking spots) and there were still plenty of purple shirts, jackets, shoes, etc. to keep us company. My daughter was particularly excited to see (and lowkey root for) the opposing Washington Mystics’ charismatic rookie duo of Sonia Citron and Stanford grad Kiki Iriafen, but, unfortunately, the resale tickets we bought had great seats but no access to the court, so autographs and selfies were out. (We did have access to the United Courtside Club, which offers exclusive versions of concessions found elsewhere in Chase Center. Later, it occurred to me that the adjoining bar and lack of courtside access might be linked. The view was fantastic, but the exclusivity markup on the United Club versions of the small, average burritos and beverages from “Backboard Burritos” was ludicrous even by SFO Terminal 3 standards).
The first of four new teams in a long-planned WNBA expansion, the Valkyries have been given multi-millions and a Warriors-level training facility, with the hopes of accelerating the journey from hopeless to contender. Showering neophyte organizations with money and demanding time-warping results is the Bay Area’s whole brand, and so far the Valkyries seem like a wildly popular pseudo-startup, form above-average logo, colors, and iconography—and reclaiming Norse imagery from white nationalists is fine with me—to its audience, which enjoys a big lavender “V’s up!” just a little too much. During Valkyries games, Chase Center has officially been renamed “Ballhalla,” and just prior to tip-off, a probably AI-generated animation shows glowing runes and raven spirits flying over a craggy Golden Gate bridge to alight in the mountain stronghold of Mission Bay. A shadowy Marvel-styled mascot plants its sword courtside next to avatars of the actual team: twelve women from five countries, mostly selected from other WNBA team rosters in December’s “expansion draft.”
The Valkyries have consistently been projected last in the league for 2025. During the expansion draft, each existing team “protects” its six best players, so Golden State had to create a full roster out of 7th-best players. Half the roster hails from outside the United States—another venerable Silicon Valley cost-saving strategy for maximizing talent at scale—though the money set aside to recruit stars has mostly stayed in reserve.
None of that shit matters. The atmosphere at Valkyries games is mindboggling, and the sold-out crowds at Ballhalla showed love to anyone in a Valkyries uniform, if and when they could actually make a goddamn shot. There’s an unspoken pact among all 18,000 fans, willing greatness into existence by screaming and cheering like we’re watching a championship match, even when, at one point on Wednesday, the poor Valkyries were literally missing 95 percent of their 3-pointers. Part of this, surely, is the Golden State Warriors legacy and the Valkyries’ singular dedication to bricking 3’s may have reflected just how much Bay Area fans treasure that shot. When a few of them fell, including one crazy buzzer-beater at halftime, it blew the roof off. In another respect, this is less about basketball than hope in a dark time.
The Valkyries’ training center is in Oakland. The American contingent arrived there early to start building the chemistry necessary for a starting lineup. Because overseas basketball seasons can stretch late into the spring, their European and Australian colleagues trickled in later. The last to arrive, French forward and Olympic silver medalist Janelle Salaün, had a 24-hour turnaround between touching down at SFO and planting herself on the Valkyries’ bench for the opener; 48 hours before her flight, she had won the Italian league championship with her team and was named Finals MVP. A consummate professional, she was in the starting lineup by Wednesday and hit the first shot of the game. Her compatriot Carla Leite, a guard, had arrived weeks earlier, still uneasy with English, but ready to speak the universal language of basketball.
A few days before opening night, the Valkyries shared an Instagram video of Leite and another French player from training camp, Migna Touré, with the Hoopbus on the grounds of Rudsdale Continuation School. She bounced an under-the-leg pass to East Oakland native Antonio Austin III off the backboard for an alley-oop dunk; she and Touré passed the ball back and forth to students and cheered them on. The school’s website describes its student body as follows:
Eighty-six percent of students are Latinx and almost nine percent are African American. Students at Rudsdale are the district’s most vulnerable student populations. Ninety-eight percent of students qualify for free or reduced lunch. Spanish and Mam are the predominant first languages of the school, and the majority of students are foreign born. Seventy-six percent of Rudsdale students are English language learners, with 48% of the student body in their first 4 years of immigration and English language acquisition. Approximately a third of our student body are unaccompanied minors, immigrant teens who immigrate without their parents.
I recognized the East Bay hills before I read a word of the Instagram caption, and instantly felt that disorienting rush of love and worry that comes with recognizing home. Beyond those hills, my wife and I used to joke, is America. We know it’s a mirage; America is here too. But somehow the Valkyries pulled out the win on Wednesday, and Leite and Salaün led the team to a second win after that on the road.