The Valkyries are in the zone

Golden State is out to a slightly surprising 2-1 start to the regular season, toggling to zone defense frequently and being particular about their shots.

Since I last posted, the Golden State Valkyries have won two games. Are they the new championship favorites? No, but considering that the WNBA’s most recent expansion team, the 2008 Atlanta Dream, didn’t win their first and second games until their 18th and 19th games of the season, Golden State has reason to be happy. That may change with a doubleheader in New York against the reigning champion Liberty this week, but as Bill Parcells (and every head coach ever) said, you are what your record says you are, and the Valkyries’ record says they’re 2-1.

A bit of housekeeping before we dive in: I’m planning, tentatively, to post on a Monday-Thursday schedule for the foreseeable future. I will cover the team more day-to-do on Twitter (yes, Twitter) and Bluesky.

Breaking down the zone

As P.L. once said, somebody stop me—I’m in the zone.

The Valkyries have thrown in quite a bit of zone in their first three games. I’ve logged them at 32 possessions total (not including six chances that didn’t end a possession, such as a non-turnover dead ball) in some form of their go-to 2-3 look. They’ve also gone to it with any combination of personnel: 18 lineup combinations have gotten at least one zone call.

It starts with the press, where they pick up in the backcourt more than one third of the time. Often the two guards just ease the offense into it, with no real pressure, but the option is there to jump less confident ballhandlers:

I don’t know that there’s a rhyme for when they press, necessarily, but the press rate is 50% with Monique Billings (who missed the second Sparks game, wherein GSV pressed less) and Kyara Linskens at the 5, compared to a 21% rate with Fagbenle in the middle.

The common way to beat zone is by shooting. The Sparks (x2) and Mystics took threes on 47.8% of their shots against the Valkyries zone and made them at a 36% rate (4/11; small sample size warning!). Shots falling gets teams out of zones real quick, and that was the case once Brittney Sykes heated up in the second half for the Mystics:

The first clip is a good example of getting a wide open shot by overloading part of the zone—three shooters up top (because Thornton gets sealed, she can’t help us as she normally would) simply outnumber the two high defenders, and quicks passing finds the open shot. Frankly, the Sparks and Mystics did not do a good job overloading the zone, and suffered as a result (LA started to run more actions to do so, and with more film on it I expect the Liberty to be well prepared).

Another knock against zones in general is that they create offensive rebounding opportunities, and that’s also held up in the small sample size. The Valkyries have grabbed 10 of 16 defensive rebound opportunities with the zone, 62.5%, well below their league-best season defensive rebound rate of 79% (per WNBA.com).

But the team is more than making up for it by forcing turnovers at a 23.7% rate, an opponent turnover rate that would rank highest in the WNBA. Of those nine turnovers, five have been valuable live-ball turnovers.

The strength of the zone has been communication. I don’t have a metric for “arms up per possession,” but the Valks would rank very highly during their time in the 2-3. The commitment to communication is what allows them to play so many different lineup combos, execute in the halfcourt, and fare well in scramble drills.

Here’s a good sequence of why comms matter and how to execute them.

In the first clip, you can see GSV doing a great job communicating their assignments and passing off matchups in the 2-3. Janelle Salaün finds work nicely in the paint and sends Hayes out to the perimeter to avoid a high-low mismatch pass, and the weakside rotates nicely, ultimately forcing a shot clock violation. At the very end of the second clip, you can see Veronica Burton and Salaün communicating who whould have done what (Salaün paint, Burton corner) as they match weakside off an entry pass. Finally, you can see how the lack of communication kills a zone: Thornton and Vanloo don’t properly figure out assignments, so a Stephanie Dolson flare screen slip goes unchecked, leaving the paint wide open.

The Valkyries have taken two approaches to dealing with post or nail entry passes. Entry passes are critical triggers for zones because, against a well-spaced look, the middle paint defender usually gets the responsibility, which can create easy, high-value paint overloads (a high-low pass is the obvious example). Golden State will matchup out of the zone on these entries (remember the communication clip we just saw? That was about matchup assignments).

You can see, variously, Salaün follow her matchup up top out of her usual corner, Hayes get dragged down to the post from the top, and Burton the same. These are all triggered by entry passes: the Valkyries don’t just relinquish their structure to matchup arbitrarily.

An adjustment they made, though, against Los Angeles (who had recent experience fighting the zone), was to have the guards at the top pinch down on those entry passes to the nail. Golden State already likes to dig down against post-ups, as seen in the clips above, and guards digging down at the second level is a natural progression.

I don’t know if this is a forward-looking adjustment or just a reaction to the fact that it was the slower Linskens, not Fágbénlé or Billings, in the paint; guards tagging down more on the nail can ease the paint patroller’s job a bit. Either way, the Valkyries’ guards are well positioned to do so—see the Burton steal—especially if teams continue to struggle to shoot and structure themselves against the Valkyries’ most fashionable trick.

Shot Selection Charts

Rise of the Valkyries has talked about Golden State’s three-point shooting to no end. Let’s keep it rolling.

The Valks continue to shoot more threes than any team in the league. They’re not getting to the restricted area very much, however, unlike teams such as the Fever, Liberty, and Sky (look at that beautiful Liberty shot distribution).

I prefer the stacked chart for the player look to the percent filled chart for the teams, because it shows you who’s getting the shots. Thornton has been ice-cold from three (please, regression to the mean, save us) but has been quietly efficient elsewhere (50% on non-restricted area and midrange shots).

Another player with a serious green light is Salaün, who stepped into the starting lineup at the first possible opportunity and ran with it. The Valkyries like to run a lot of horns and stack exit sets for her—this one, I believe, is “Horns bang slash,” but we can call it Splash:

Finally, Carla Leite had an excellent two-way game against the Sparks and had double-digit points in both wins. More of these, please (hey, it’s our old friend Horns Slash in clip 1):

Coach Reaction Clip of the Week: You Can’t Just Punch Her

I don’t usually add sound to my clips (I’m accustomed to talking over clips anyways). This one deserved it.

Tell ‘em, coach!