SAN FRANCISCO – Rewind to just past halftime of Game 3 between the Golden State Valkyries and the Dallas Wings, almost a week and a half ago, with Golden State trailing 45-37 on their violet home floor in a do-or-die, winner-takes-all, elimination game. Before the Valkyries mounted a 16-point comeback to save their season. Before the Valkyries swept the defending champion Las Vegas Aces and punched their ticket to the WNBA Finals.
You'll see an anxious crowd worried for their team. You'll notice a game on the verge of slipping out of control for the ones dressed in violet jerseys. And you'll remember the ocean's worth of pressure atop Golden State's shoulders in that moment, with the Wings threatening to stamp out a special season before it could bloom.
However, you'll watch as the national broadcast captures the five Valkyries on the floor– Veronica Burton, Gabby Williams, Kaila Charles, Kayla Thornton, and Kiah Stokes– huddled together, taking a deep breath as one. Inhale. Exhale. Calm.
It was the kind of thing you'd see from a team that knows exactly how to control their panic and anxiety. The kind of thing you'd see from a team already tested by the boiling cauldron of the playoffs. And one of the catalysts for the Valkyries surviving Game 3 and going on to tear through the Aces. But according to Burton, that breathing exercise isn't one of their routines.
“People really love that. We don't do that,” Burton said Monday afternoon, crediting Thornton for sensing they needed something to reset their nerves in a moment of spontaneity.
“Everyone thinks it's a routine thing. It was just really a heat-of-the-moment. We needed it, and KT (Thornton) brought us together in that moment. Her veteran leadership was huge. We clearly could not hit a shot in that moment. Things were not going well for us. It's a do-or-die situation, and so yeah, it's not something that we do every game. But we needed it, and she told us we needed to take a deep breath. So I said the words. We did it, and we rallied. But yeah, it's just one of those things where (it was) an awareness of what we need. And in that moment, we needed to take an exhale and be together and just be present.”
Veronica Burton talked about how GSV’s composure this season so I about the breathing exercise they did the huddle and she said it was a spur of the moment:
“(KT)told us we need to take a deep breath… it's just one of those things where (she had) an awareness of what we need.” pic.twitter.com/TDuud9JV4x
— Kenzo Fukuda (@kenzofuku) October 12, 2026
Rising to the moment
Burton's second-to-last sentence is key. “An awareness of what we need.” That's not something you wish into existence from a genie bottle you found at the bottom of a cave. That's something you have to learn. Something you have to develop. Through thousands of thousands of reps. Whether that's gutting out clutch game after clutch game or bringing in a group of individuals familiar with pressure, awareness of the moment can only be forged in fire.
“We could all feel ourselves get jittery in that moment,” Williams told basketball legend Tina Charles in an ESPN segment a couple of days later. “Really not understanding why things were not working, trying to figure it out, and we just (go) ‘Hold up, let's take a step back actually.' Instead of getting farther into it, let's just take a step back, and just breathe it, and get back to our usual selves.”
The Valkyries' “usual selves” are a demoralizing avalanche of threes, steals, deflections, and layups in transition. But while “usual selves” were built in the tribulations of the regular season, Golden State had long strived for a bar necessary for Natalie Nakase's “empty the tank, all four quarters” high standard, a bar she raised again and again over the course of the year.
Article Continues BelowBut in that moment, when Thornton gathered them together and told them to take a breath, the Valkyries proved they could center themselves. That they could block out all the extraneous thoughts and feelings. It's one thing to be able to talk about having composure. It's another thing to use those teachings in the moment. As Burton said later in the scrum, executing those teachings has been their emphasis since Day 1.
“It comes down to just staying together, communicating with one another, and again focusing on what we control,” Burton said. “That's pouring into each other and building each other up. And when things aren't going well or we're not hitting shots, it's just again buying into our identity, which is on the defensive end.”
It was Thornton pouring in her championship-level experience in the form of a breath. And it's those kinds of moments that the Valkyries can call on in the Finals. Like they called on in Vegas, when they blitzed the Aces with a 10-2 run in overtime of the Game 3 closeout game with zero fear.
The Valkyries have nerves of steel. And skin like Teflon. They've experienced death and lived to tell the tale. That's a dangerous thing to have in a team searching for even more.
“We do it for each other because we know what we've been through,” Thornton said. “So we don't have anybody out there trying to do it all. We know we need each other, and that's the most important thing.”