Facundo revela quiénes son sus favoritos para ganar

SAN FRANCISCO — The Golden State Valkyries made history Thursday night as they became the first WNBA expansion franchise to make the playoffs in its inaugural season.

The Valkyries clinched the berth after beating the Dallas Wings 84-80 at Chase Center.

“A lot of people didn’t believe in us, (and) it lights a fire in us,” forward Janelle Salaun said. “It’s a good thing. It’s better to start as the underdog and prove it to everyone. I know the girls on this team have (always) been in this position. It’s something that we are used to, and we did it as a group.”

Veronica Burton squared up against 2025 No. 1 draft pick Paige Bueckers as the game clock ticked down to under 30 seconds left in the game and Golden State up by just two points.

Burton started working toward her right, dragging Bueckers inside the 3-point line with her. Burton tried to shake her, and as Grace Berger reached as the help defender, Burton fought through the contact and threw up a circus shot.

“I kind of blacked out,” Burton said, laughing.

As the ball went in, she punched the air, and Ballhalla erupted as the Valkyries went up four, all but deciding the game.

“I don’t even know what I was feeling. … I was just trying to get a bucket when it mattered in crunch time,” Burton said. “I wasn’t looking for the foul, I was just looking to finish. … It was a huge help having everyone instill a bunch of confidence in me.”

Burton finished with 15 points on 5-of-10 shooting and five assists. Salaun led the team with 19 points, and Carla Leite had 15 points on 6-of-8 shooting and a plus-28 net rating.

After the final buzzer, the players gathered at center court and put on T-shirts that read “Playoffs 2025.” Fans refused to leave the stands, dancing to Rihanna’s “This Is What You Came For.” Salaun grabbed the arena mic and yelled, “Let’s Goooo,” and inside the locker room, players doused each other with water.

Valkyries coach Natalie Nakase watched the celebration from what she considered a healthy distance, knowing she would let the team have this moment, but tomorrow it would be right back to the film room.

Golden State has just three games remaining on its regular-season schedule — two against the league-leading Minnesota Lynx — and each is crucial to secure seeding and not fall to the seventh or eighth spot in the standings.

“I know, I’m a party pooper,” Nakase said.

She added: “We’re not done yet. Maybe after the season, after this is all done, I’ll reflect … I’ve got to stay present. I’ve got to stay where my feet are … and I think that’s why we’ve been able to do what we do, because we stay present. I don’t really allow them to celebrate. They can obviously enjoy this, but I also keep them humble. Y’all want to continue to make strides? Then let’s stay focused.”

Despite being a “start-up” team, the Valkyries have been confident in themselves since they reported to camp in April. With a roster made up of former sixth women and role players, international stars and young rookies, the common conclusion was that it would take time — at least a season — for Golden State to find its footing. That’s how most other expansion teams start out, like when the Atlanta Dream joined the WNBA in 2008 as the league’s last expansion team.

But the Valkyries made it clear they were writing their own story and did not want to be compared to expansion teams before them. They used the doubt as fuel.

“I told the girls this: We picked you guys for this reason — to do things for the first (time),” Nakase said.

Golden State has broken several records throughout its first season. First, it became the first team in women’s sports history to eclipse 15,000 season-ticket deposits. It led the league in attendance, selling out all 22 of its home games in Chase Center, which seats over 18,000. Now, it’s the first expansion team competing in the playoffs.

“This is awesome, honestly,” Burton said. “It’s a testament to all of the work that we put in, a testament to the belief that our coaching staff had in us; Ohemaa [Nyanin], the front office, all of them. To do it with the group that we did, we’re just enjoying it, soaking it in. Obviously, there is a long road ahead of us, but (we’re) able to sit and enjoy it.”

Because of a scheduling conflict, the Valkyries will not play their first home playoff game at Chase Center. Instead, Game 2 will be hosted at the SAP Center in San Jose, 48.4 miles from San Francisco.

“We can’t control it,” Burton said. “We have faith in our fans that they are going to continue to show out for us. Wherever we play, we’re going to bring our basketball. We’re confident, we’re excited for the opportunity to compete. Regardless of where we’re at, we’re going to show up.”

Who the Valkyries will face in the first round is still up in the air. They currently sit in the sixth seed, one game behind the New York Liberty. The Seattle Storm are a game and a half behind the Valkyries in seventh. The Dream, Phoenix Mercury and Las Vegas Aces are in a heated race from the second, third and fourth seeds.

Ferrari has explained why it decided against using Lewis Hamilton to try to tow team-mate Charles Leclerc to pole position at Formula 1’s Italian Grand Prix.

Hamilton’s five-place grid penalty for this weekend’s race at Monza meant he would never be in contention to start at the front – so opened up an opportunity for him to be used to give Leclerc a beneficial slipstream.

The idea seemed even more of a logical option for Ferrari with the field being so competitive in Italy and a tiny advantage from a tow potentially having a big impact in the fight for the top spot.

Hamilton himself had even suggested in the build up to the weekend that he would be open to the idea if it meant helping Leclerc to the front.

“It’s not been discussed,” he said. “But if it meant getting Charles there, then I would be happy to play that role.”

But despite the opportunity that was clearly on the table as Leclerc matched eventual pole position man Max Verstappen in the first Q3 runs, Ferrari elected not to impose it for the second efforts – with Leclerc holding track position in front of Hamilton throughout.

While Leclerc was happy with the lap he delivered, he admitted not getting the perfect tow from those ahead of him perhaps compromised him as he ended up 0.215 seconds behind Verstappen at the end.

“I’m happy in a way that I think we’ve maximised the package that we had today, and I think I did a really good first lap in Q3,” he said.

“Unfortunately on the second lap of Q3 I was a little bit in the front with nobody – or just Yuki [Tsunoda] – in front. That makes a big difference here, so there wasn’t much more that we could have done.

“But I think we did a good job maximising the result. I think the gaps show that McLaren and Red Bull are a bit too far ahead.”

Asked if the slipstream should have been discussed, Leclerc said: “It’s something we’ll discuss with the team now.

“It’s always tricky to get it perfectly right and Lewis is still fighting to be starting as far up as possible. So we’ll discuss about it, but I don’t think it’s the main point of today.”

Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur was pretty clear after the session that while there were theoretical gains to be had from the slipstream, there were too many downsides to doing it.

With the way that cars have to run at a minimum speed throughout the lap, it would mean needing to totally sacrifice the car in front from being able to do a competitive lap.

Speaking to F1 TV after qualifying about why Ferrari did not go for the tow tactics, Vasseur said: “Because with this story of maximum lap time, if you do it, you have to sacrifice one car, and it’s important for the team and for the two drivers to be in a positive mood.

“For sure, it could work, but also could not work at all, even for Charles, because you are much more focused then on the tow, the gap with the car in front of you, than on the tyre preparation. And the tyre preparation is so important today that we decided to be focused on your own pace.”

Vasseur added that his conclusion was Ferrari had done the right thing in focusing more on the tyre work – but did concede that things could have been different had Hamilton been totally out of the picture in terms of a grid position.

“We decided to do it this way, without sacrificing anyone,” he added. “Seeing Leclerc’s gap, I don’t think he would have taken pole anyway. Charles understood and didn’t ask for it. It would have been different if Lewis had started from the pitlane.”

Hamilton, who qualified fifth but starts 10th because of his grid penalty, said that the slipstream had never been considered because of the risks involved of getting it wrong.

“It’s not something that’s been in any of my other teams,” he said. “Ultimately, you potentially end up sacrificing one of the drivers. And I’ve already got a five-place penalty, so points wise I needed to be as high as I could.”

Bitter feeling

Leclerc said that being happy with a lap that ended up only being good enough for fourth on the grid was not something to be overjoyed about.

Asked if there was a bittersweet feeling, he said: “It’s also bitter when you are fighting for fourth and third place. So maybe.

“In the end it’s kind of what we expected. But we shouldn’t be satisfied, we should be pushing as much as we can to try to turn that situation around. It’s what we are doing.

“At the end of the day, I did the lap that I wanted, I put everything together, I’m very happy with my lap actually and I don’t think there was much more possible. So on that side I’m positive. But obviously starting fourth isn’t great.”