Fans craned their heads toward the giant scoreboard screen to watch a video of female winged warriors flying over San Francisco. At both ends of the basketball court, flames shot up from behind the backboards.
San Francisco’s new mayor was in the crowd. A few San Francisco 49ers players and their wives sat courtside. Angela Davis, the social justice activist who is now 81, stepped onto the court grasping a mallet, then repeatedly swung it at a large bass drum.
The sold-out crowd of more than 18,000 people rose to its feet. They cheered so loudly, the Chase Center, an arena on the edge of the San Francisco Bay, seemed to vibrate.
“G! S! V!” the fans hollered, one letter for each thwack of the drum.
They were cheering for the Golden State Valkyries, the W.N.B.A.’s first expansion team in 17 years. But they also seemed to be cheering for something more: the surge of excitement in San Francisco over women’s sports and the return of optimism and joy to the city after a brutal pandemic and its aftermath. (The Golden State Warriors’ 2022 N.B.A. championship notwithstanding.)
On the last night of August, the Valkyries were about to take the court against the Indiana Fever. A few wins later, they would become the league’s only expansion team to make the playoffs in its first season and will enter the W.N.B.A. playoffs on Sunday as the eighth seed against the No. 1 Minnesota Lynx.
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The post Inside the Most Valuable Team in Women’s Sports appeared first on New York Times.
