Toronto and Portland should copy the Valkyries: build the defense first and let the offense catch up
Golden State reached the WNBA Finals in their second season with an offense close to the league average and a defense 8.7 points per 100 possessions better than it. The two 2026 expansion teams scored about as well as the 2025 Valkyries did. They defended far worse.
By Victor AshbyDesk name · October 11, 2026 · 4 min read
The Golden State Valkyries play the Atlanta Dream in Game 1 of the WNBA Finals on Saturday, October 17, at Chase Center, in only their second season. My advice to the league's two newest teams, the Toronto Tempo and the Portland Fire, is simple. Study how Golden State got there, and copy the order. Defense first. The offense can come later.
That is my opinion. The numbers it rests on are below.
How I measured it
Points allowed per game flatters a slow team, and the Valkyries are slow. So I used a rating per 100 possessions. A possession is one trip down the floor that ends in a shot, a turnover or free throws. I estimated each team's possessions from its 2026 regular-season totals in the usual way: field goal attempts, minus offensive rebounds, plus turnovers, plus 0.44 times free throw attempts. Then I divided points scored and points allowed by that number. Every team played 44 games.
The league as a whole scored 105.8 points per 100 possessions this season and 102.3 in 2025.
What the Valkyries were
In 2025, their first season, Golden State went 23-21 and made the playoffs, where Minnesota beat them in two games. Their offense scored 100.4 points per 100 possessions, 1.8 below the league average and ninth of 13 teams. Their defense allowed 98.7, 3.6 better than average and third best. They also allowed the fewest points per game of any team, 76.3, but part of that was pace: no team in the league played slower, in 2025 or in 2026.
In 2026, they went 32-12, the second-best record. The offense rose to 106.1, just 0.4 above average and seventh of 15. The defense allowed 97.0, which was 8.7 points per 100 possessions better than average. The next-best defense, Atlanta's, was 5.3 better. Golden State then swept Las Vegas in the semifinals.
Put simply, the Valkyries have never had a top-five offense. They had a top-three defense in year one and the best by a distance in year two.
What Toronto and Portland were
The two expansion teams played their first season in 2026.
- Portland went 17-27. Offense 104.7, 1.1 below average. Defense 110.5, 4.8 worse than average, 14th of 15.
- Toronto went 11-33. Offense 103.8, 1.9 below average. Defense 114.4, 8.6 worse than average, last in the league.
Line those up against the Valkyries' first season. Relative to the league, Portland's offense was better than Golden State's was in 2025, and Toronto's was about the same. The difference is all on the other end. Golden State defended 3.6 points better than average in its first year. Portland defended 4.8 worse and Toronto 8.6 worse.
The case against me
The strongest objection is that this is one team. One team is not a law of expansion. The Valkyries may simply have found the right players, and a defense-first plan with the wrong players is just a bad offense.
That is fair, and I cannot prove the order matters from one example. But I am not arguing that defense wins titles in general. I am arguing something narrower. In year one, Toronto and Portland already score at roughly the level Golden State did. What separates a 23-21 playoff team from an 11-33 team, in these numbers, is defense. If the Tempo and the Fire spend their next roster dollars on more scoring, they are buying the thing they are least short of.
A second objection: offense sells tickets in a new market. Maybe. But Golden State drew 18,064 to Chase Center for Game 2 of the semifinals with the league's seventh-best offense, and by my estimate the slowest pace in the league in both of its seasons. A team built on defense does not have to play to empty seats.
What would prove me wrong
If Portland or Toronto improves by 10 wins next season mostly through its offense, with its defense still in the bottom three, then I am wrong about the order, and I will say so in this space.
What they should do
The Tempo and the Fire should judge every offseason move by one question: does it make us better at stopping people? A defender who cannot score much is a better buy for them this winter than a scorer who cannot guard. The Valkyries are in the Finals with a middle-of-the-pack offense. That is the template, and it is sitting on the court at Chase Center on Saturday.
Update, October 14: the Valkyries reached the Finals, and I have picked the Dream to beat them. The defense is still the best case against my pick.
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