With the season nearing it's end, I wanted to just have a thread specifically about this and point to some date.
So first, here are the prior 10 1st year expansion teams in WNBA history ranked by SRS:
1. 1998 Detroit Shock -0.27
2. 1999 Orlando Miracle -1.16
3. 1999 Minnesota Lynx -1.25
4. 2000 Portland Fire -3.49
5. 2000 Indiana Fever -3.66
6. 2000 Miami Sol -6.43
7. 2000 Seattle Storm -9.12
8. 2008 Atlanta Dream -9.62
9. 2006 Chicago Sky -9.83
10. 1998 Washington Mystics -13.63
I think it's worth considering this in basically 3 time periods:
1998 & 1999 - In this time periods, we're largely talking about established pros making their WNBA debut a year or two after it starts. Sandy Brondello (Shock) was a 29 year old Australian legend, while Taj McWilliams (Miracle) & Katie Smith (Lynx) were coming out of the ABL. This then to say that when expansion teams are built by gathering known top talents from other competitive leagues, this is a totally different type of team than one that's just getting the leftovers from their soon-to-be in-league competition.
Now, the first year Mystics were hideously bad, but it wasn't because they didn't land respected talent - Nikki McCray won the chip BL MVP in the rival ABL's first ('96-97) season - but the thing is, they won again the next year after she left the ABL to go to the WNBA which I kinda thing tells us that McCray got a bit overrated, and that her ABL teammates (including Smith) and coach (now WNBA legend Brian Agler) deserved more credit than they were initially given.
Then 2000 hits with not one or two expansion teams, but 4 expansion teams. This is honestly insane, and it's no wonder that they were less competitive than that early teams showed themselves capable of being, and seriously, these new franchises were probably the most set-up-to-fail with WNBA planning mistakes in the whole span. The fact that Seattle & Indiana managed to stick around and thrive warrants major applause both for management and for the fanbases that have long qualified as small markets (though Seattle arguably isn't anymore).
Finally we get to 2006 & 2008, and we see two extremely bad performances for the expansions. Not the worse we ever saw because of the Mystics, but in both cases we're talking worst-in-league bad, and being crafted much like how we saw the Valkeries craft in 2025.
I'd argue that these teams are the level we expected the Valkeries to perform.
What have the Valkeries done instead? An SRS of +1.55 with a few games to go. Seems all but clinched the first positive SRS we've seen from a first year expansion team in WNBA history. It's incredible!
It's also potentially cause for the whole basketball world to learn something, and most certainly for the WNBA.
The WNBA has, for a while now, had the narrative that the vets were so good compared to the rookies that even first round draft picks might not be worth a roster spot, and the fact that the only expansion teams of the past 20 years were so awful supported that assertion.
By contrast, an expansion team of immediately being above average without the aid of any players who were actually seen as top tier pros from other major leagues, or any super-hyped draft pick, suggests a very different story.
If a new team can take your castoffs and beat you with them, then that either means
a) you cast off the wrong players
b) you weren't using these players - and thus players generally - optimally
or
c) both.
The immediate thing I can't help but look at is 3P rate. If we look at the NBA, here are the top teams by 3PAr and what that rate is:
1. Boston .536
2. Golden State .469
3. Brooklyn .458
4. Cleveland .457
5. Chicago .457
And now for the W:
1. Golden State .463
2. Atlanta .418
3. New York .414
4. Phoenix .399
5. Los Angeles .385
So what we continue to see is that the WNBA isn't shooting 3's at the volume of the NBA... but Golden State's shooting about the same amount in both leagues, and that's leading to them being way ahead of their rivals on this front.
I'd suggest then that we're talking about a new WNBA franchise coming in looking to apply everything that was learned by their NBA counterparts, and in doing this effectively, they're gaining major advantages over what you'd get if you just picked from the leftovers of other teams without trying to leverage any new ideas.
Now to be clear, that doesn't mean that scouting isn't part of their advantage here, and something I'll note is that Veronica Burton has a higher raw +/- than anyone from an expansion team in the past (with a greater per game rate), and that this is happening with the Valkeries standing behind her early on as she struggled to git from the field.
The Valkeries seem to have latched on to Burton as the critical piece for their defense-led team, but then really pushed her to see if she could be an offensive star too, and she's increasingly looking like she can.
Super-impressive!
Now, as good as all this is, I do think there's a good chance that Valkerie FO/ownership will make some major missteps starting in the off-season. Lacob wants GS to be a place where free agents want to come, and now I think it will be, but if they really embrace this, it will mean messing with the chemistry of the team that's humming along so nicely, and it's so easy to end up with something that is now less than the sum of its parts rather than more.
