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Valkyrie Nation · Aug 27, 2026

Game 39 preview. GSV at New York Liberty. 5:00 PM PT

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Eric Apricot · Valkyrie Nation

Last game's Valkyrie Valor goes to Justė Jocytė

  • Not sure I can write notes, as I have to drive a dear one from the airport through rush hour. Last game I gave you some pretty detailed notes on zone defense, so you have some video homework to do!

  • I’ll post the raw discombobulated notes (if any) as I write them to the Discord server (see bottom) and quarter by quarter in the comments of this article.

  • Feel free to write your game reactions in either Discord or the article comments. Be respectful to each other. (Most of the live game chat seems to be happening in the Discord server. )

The TV channel finding experience is truly miserable in 2026.

  • Prime Video. Sorry, looks like you have to join Prime?

  • KPIX (Bay Area), KMAX (Sacramento). KPIX is channel 5 in the Bay Area. KMAX is channel 31 in Sacramento.

  • WNBA League Pass if you are out of the blackout region. Even if blacked out, in theory the game is available right after the conclusion.

VN reader jesswondering developed this bingo game with the help of the Valkyrie Nation Collective. You can read the backstory here.

To play:

by Eric, Marisa Thinkmoo, and the Valkyrie Nation collective

  • The Valks drafted Kayla Thornton from NYL in the 2025 expansion draft. The Liberty left her unprotected despite her playing a solid role in their 2024 championship run. Thornton became a 2025 All-Star.

  • Thornton was teammates on that 2024 Liberty championship squad with several current Liberty players, including Breanna Stewart, Sabrina Ionescu, Jonquel Jones, Leonie Fiebich, and Marine Johannes.

  • Kiah Stokes was drafted by the New York Liberty 11th overall in 2015 and played seven seasons in New York (2015–2021) before joining the Las Vegas Aces (where she won three championships in 2022, 2023, and 2025) and then the Valkyries. She was on the 2021 Liberty roster alongside current Liberty players Sabrina Ionescu, and Rebecca Allen.

  • Longtime Warriors assistant Chris DeMarco left to become the New York Liberty head coach in late 2025.

  • Valkyries GM Ohemaa Nyanin spent five years with the Liberty organization (2019–2024).

  • Liberty star Breanna Stewart is a UConn alumna who won national championships alongside two current Valkyries: Gabby Williams (teammates 2014–2016, including the 2016 championship game) and Kiah Stokes (teammates 2012–2015, winning three straight titles in 2013, 2014, and 2015). Stewart, Williams, Stokes, Tiffany Hayes, and Kaitlyn Chen give these two teams a combined five UConn Huskies.

  • The Liberty feature French guard Marine Johannes, who played with Gabby Williams, Iliana Rupert, Janelle Salaün and Carla Leite on French national teams.

    • Marine also played with Juste Jocyte and Gabby Williams at ASVEL in 2023.

    • Marine was Juste’s favorite player growing up.

    • Marine is also romantically linked to Gabby Williams.

Pop Quiz Game 39. Can you guess the reason for the team order? First few correct solutions sent to apricotan@gmail.com will be acknowledged in VN.

The first readers with the correct answer to VN Pop Quiz Game 38 were:

  1. Eric M

  2. Victor M

  3. Jyoti A

  4. Erin S

  5. Kevin Danna, radio and TV play by play for your Golden State Valkyries

Thanks to everyone who played. No solution given here, but I’m working on a full quiz archive with hints, so you’ll be able to replay every puzzle at your own pace

Previous meetings this season:

Team stats (via stats.wnba.com and Basketball Reference, rank out of 15 teams):

  • ORTG: GSV 109.0 (7th) | NYL 111.8 (4th)

  • DRTG: GSV 100.3 (1st) | NYL 107.9 (9th)

  • NET RTG: GSV +8.7 (2nd) | NYL +3.9 (6th)

  • 2P%: GSV .483 (14th) | NYL .553 (1st)

  • 3P%: GSV .345 (7th) | NYL .352 (5th)

Golden State Valkyries (27-11)

Top 3 by stat (per game, via Basketball Reference, min 10 MPG):

  • PTS: Gabby Williams (14.4) | Janelle Salaün (13.1) | Veronica Burton (12.5)

  • AST: Veronica Burton (5.6) | Tiffany Hayes (2.5) | Gabby Williams (2.1)

  • REB: Kiah Stokes (5.4) | Kayla Thornton (4.6) | Kaila Charles (4.2)

  • STL: Gabby Williams (1.7) | Veronica Burton (1.5) | Cecilia Zandalasini (0.9)

  • BLK: Kiah Stokes (1.7) | Laeticia Amihere (0.8) | Veronica Burton (0.4)

  • 2P%: Kaitlyn Chen (.576) | Kiah Stokes (.547) | Tiffany Hayes (.537)

  • 3P% (min 1.0 3PM): Janelle Salaün (.390) | Veronica Burton (.370) | Kayla Thornton (.345)

  • FT%: Kayla Thornton (.920) | Janelle Salaün (.827) | Veronica Burton (.818)

  • PER: Veronica Burton (20.2) | Janelle Salaün (19.3) | Tiffany Hayes (18.8)

New York Liberty (23-15)

Top 3 by stat (per game, via Basketball Reference, min 10 MPG):

  • PTS: Breanna Stewart (20.8) | Sabrina Ionescu (15.9) | Jonquel Jones (14.6)

  • AST: Sabrina Ionescu (4.8) | Pauline Astier (3.4) | Breanna Stewart (3.3)

  • REB: Jonquel Jones (9.2) | Breanna Stewart (8.1) | Sabrina Ionescu (4.0)

  • STL: Breanna Stewart (1.3) | Leonie Fiebich (1.2) | Pauline Astier (0.9)

  • BLK: Breanna Stewart (1.4) | Jonquel Jones (1.1) | Han Xu (0.6)

  • 2P%: Pauline Astier (.605) | Han Xu (.604) | Jonquel Jones (.594)

  • 3P% (min 1.0 3PM): Leonie Fiebich (.446) | Rebecca Allen (.403) | Marine Johannes (.393)

  • FT%: Rebekah Gardner (.927) | Sabrina Ionescu (.895) | Leonie Fiebich (.893)

  • PER: Breanna Stewart (23.2) | Jonquel Jones (21.0) | Han Xu (17.7)

The WNBA makes all injury reports available and updates the site absurdly often (every 15 minutes). This report is from the August 27, 2026, 2:15 AM ET injury report PDF.

Golden State Valkyries

WNBA injury report not yet submitted.

  • Rupert, Iliana — OUT FOR SEASON — Pregnancy (sigh) We discussed Rupert’s pregnancy in extensive detail before

  • No one else listed.

New York Liberty

  • Sabally, Satou — Out — Injury/Illness - Head; Not With Team

I’ve been asked often what Probable, Available, Questionable, Doubtful mean. They are meant to not have specific probabilities attached to them, partly because how could you even hope to estimate such probabilities to any precision?

However, just for your information, I did do a quick study of all 501 injury reports from the WNBA from 2026-05-16 to 2026-07-05 and found:

  • 300+ players listed as Out, played < 1% of the time. (That 1% comprises development players listed as Out who were activated last-minute.)

  • 5 Players listed as Doubtful played 0% of the time.

  • 82 Players listed as Questionable played 45% of the time.

  • 12 Players listed as Available played 67% of the time.

  • 38 Players listed as Probable played 84% of the time.

Golden State Valkyries

Honorary Valkyries

Want to know more about a player? Check out Valkyries Say Less, who have a series of podcasts that profiles every Valkyrie!

New York Liberty

  • 0 Satou Sabally, SAH-two SAH-buh-lee

  • 4 Marine Fauthoux

  • 7 Rebekah Gardner

  • 9 Rebecca Allen

  • 13 Leonie Fiebich, Lay-oh-knee Fee-bish

  • 14 Raquel Carrera Quintana

  • 18 Pauline Astier

  • 20 Sabrina Ionescu, YO-ness-coo

  • 21 Han Xu, shoo

  • 23 Marine Johannès, Jo-ha-ness

  • 24 Anneli Maley, ANN-uh-lee MAY-LEE

  • 30 Breanna Stewart, bree-ANN-uh [NOT bree-ON-uh]

  • 35 Jonquel Jones, jon-quell

Also, for more name pronunciations, including many players saying their own names, check out Her Hoop Stats.

  • Ash = Ashten Prechtel

  • Ceci (cheh-chee) = Cecilia Zandalasini

  • illy, ili = Iliana Rupert

  • Ja = Janelle Salaün

  • Jak = Ndjakalenga Mwenentanda

  • J.J. = Juste Jocyte

  • Kai = Kaila Charles

  • K.T. = Kayla Thornton

  • L.A. = Laeticia Amihere

  • Mr. Joe = owner Joe Lacob

    • (I’m not endorsing this; I’m just reporting that the GM and players use this all the time)

  • Nat = Natalie Nakase

  • Tip = Tiffany Hayes

  • V, V.B. = Veronica Burton

  • The Backcourt Burglar = Veronica Burton (college)

  • The Black Queen = Laeticia Amihere (from childhood)

  • KFC = Kaitlyn Chen (VN discord). Too many others to list…

    • I personally use Here Comes The Cheneral and Bringing the Chenergy.

  • SPF 41 = Kiah Stokes (against the Sun, get it?)

  • Spooky G = Gabby Williams (uses herself, don’t know origin)

  • V12 = Veronica Burton (college probably)

By the way, I’ve started a new YouTube channel called Eric Apricot Jam. It would really help if you subscribed to it (for free!). This would tell YouTube that there is an audience for women’s basketball and that YT should share out my videos about the WNBA to more people.

These videos are meant to be friendly to beginners but have interesting observations for observers of all backgrounds. All the parts can be viewed independently, but the vocabulary does build up with each Part. The whole series can be found on YouTube here.

Here are the series in reverse posting order.

  • No Silly Questions with H: Valkyries at Toronto. (I discuss many important and random issues with my daughter H, such as isolation plays, coach adjustments, in the bonus / penalty, intentionally fouling, and the exact color shade of the Tempo)

Here’s a new video about the Chicago game on Aug 12 2026!

And here are the older videos which are still good to watch…

Part 4 terms defined include:

  • 00:38 Switching defense

  • 00:56 Mismatches

  • 02:15 Bad switches

  • 03:25 Show and recover defense (hedge and recover)

  • 04:54 Drop defense

  • 06:17 Valkyries 325 = Warriors 55

  • 06:54 Blitz / Trap / Double team defense, surprise

  • 07:41 Countering the blitz with isolation

  • 08:45 Drop vs blitz defense

Part 3 terms defined include:

  • 00:33 Go Over the screen, Go Under the screen, High side, Low side

  • 02:19 HORNS formation

  • 02:33 Dive or Roll

  • 03:23 HORNS 5

  • 04:14 Dribble handoff, DHO

  • 05:07 Pindown screen, Down screen

  • 05:15 Using the screen, Coming off the screen

  • 06:37 Jamming the cut, Bumping the cut, Denying the cut

  • 07:35 Slip a screen, Roll vs Pop

Part 2 terms defined include:

  • 00:38 Recover

  • 00:46 Bigs and Smalls

  • 00:54 Mismatch

  • 01:53 Rotating on defense

  • 02:42 Slipping the screen, ghosting the screen

  • 03:03 Double team, trap, blitz

  • 04:02 Rejecting the screen

  • 04:26 Helping at the nail

  • 06:21 Slide cut, Passing angle

Part 1 terms include:

  • 00:34 Dribbling and shooting, big vs small

  • 02:00 Screens

  • 02:10 Off ball

  • 02:32 Cut, Flare Cut, Flare Screen

  • 03:39 Ball Fake

  • 03:53 Geography of the Court

  • 03:57 Baseline, sideline, up, down, top

  • 04:10 Corners, elbows, HORNS

  • 05:29 Pick and roll, screen and roll

  • 05:49 Dribble handoff

  • 06:17 Rebounding, boxing out

  • 06:18 Roll

  • 07:18 Backdoor cut

  • 07:46 ICE defense

  • 07:51 take / accept / use the screen

If you don’t know what Discord is, you can ignore this. If you like how the site is now, then don’t worry. This site will still work the same and I’ll still post game previews and wraps over email and the web, etc.

However, if you are wondering where everyone is during game day, it’s the Discord server. For instance, for the 7/15 IND live game chat, there were 880 messages (that’s a lot, even if 150 of them were Kaitlyn Chen puns).

Basically Discord is a group chat where you can engage with me and other readers. It’s good for conversation that’s a bit more casual than leaving a web site comment. You can also respond with emojis and multimedia.

I have been posting my live game notes in the Discord chat as I write them. I even live-commented the media-coaches game over Discord and answered questions. Questions and comments sometimes turn into things I write about for the newsletter.

For now, I’ll keep it open to everyone, but I reserve the right in the future to restrict it to paying subscribers.

Many thanks to Marisa Emi and Tac0maAr0ma for volunteering to moderate the Discord and generally reorganizing it intelligently.

The invitation link for August: https://discord.gg/3P5XTuwAd

Read the original on valkyrienation.substack.com ↗

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