Gabby Williams scored 30 points in the first Game 7 in WNBA history on Saturday, October 31, and then found a text from Michael Jordan waiting on her phone. It said two words: “Stay hungry.”
Williams, named Finals MVP after the Golden State Valkyries beat the Atlanta Dream 68-63 at Chase Center, said in an interview published this week that she answered within moments: “I’ve never been hungrier.”
The exchange came as Williams scrolled through a pile of congratulatory messages after the title. Jordan’s was the one she singled out. She had played Game 7 in a pair of Air Jordan 41 sneakers, the brand’s current signature shoe, which gives the text a neat footnote: the player who closed out the series did it in his shoes.
Twenty-eight points in one half
The numbers behind the message are the real story. Of Williams’s 30 points, 28 came after halftime. She scored the Valkyries’ last 11 points of the third quarter to swing a game Atlanta had led 30-24 at the break, then added a game-high four blocks and two steals on the defensive end. Only one other player has ever scored 30 or more in a winner-take-all WNBA Finals game.
Her teammates did not bother with understatement. Guard Tiffany Hayes said at the team’s exit interviews on Monday, November 2, that “we have Gabby Williams, and you don’t,” calling the second half one of the greatest things she had ever seen. Veronica Burton, who was on the floor beside her, said it felt like watching from the stands. Owner Joe Lacob called the half “legendary.”
Williams herself has not replayed any of it yet. “I’m just living in the moment,” she said, adding that she had spent the days since with family, friends and teammates, and that the group “will never have this exact group again.”
How the series got to a seventh game
This was only the second WNBA Finals played under the best-of-seven format and the first playoff series of any kind in league history to need a deciding game. Golden State led 1-0, trailed 2-1, led 3-2 and then lost Game 6 in Atlanta by 11 in a 12:30 p.m. tip-off, forcing the decider on Halloween night in San Francisco in front of 18,064 fans.
- Game 1, Oct. 17: Valkyries 68, Dream 64 (Williams 26 points)
- Game 2, Oct. 19: Dream 79, Valkyries 65
- Game 3, Oct. 21: Dream 97, Valkyries 71
- Game 4, Oct. 24: Valkyries 67, Dream 62
- Game 5, Oct. 26: Valkyries 64, Dream 55
- Game 6, Oct. 29: Dream 80, Valkyries 69 (Williams 26 points)
- Game 7, Oct. 31: Valkyries 68, Dream 63 (Williams 30 points)
Add up the margins and this was a grinding series: neither team cracked 100 in any game, and four of the seven were decided by single digits. Williams finished the 2026 playoffs averaging 21 points, 4.2 rebounds and 2.2 steals over 13 games, the heaviest postseason workload of her career.
A second-year team and a homecoming
The Valkyries only started playing in 2025. Winning a championship in year two makes them the fastest North American expansion franchise to a title, and they did it with a roster that was heavy on French and European talent: Williams, who holds French citizenship through her mother and captained France at the 2026 World Cup in Berlin, lined up alongside Iliana Rupert, Janelle Salaun, Aminata Gueye and Juste Jocyte.
Williams’s route to the Bay Area was a free-agency homecoming. She signed a multi-year deal with Golden State on April 12, 2026, after four seasons in Seattle, where in 2025 she led the league in steals with 99. General manager Ohemaa Nyanin said at the time that a player of her caliber choosing a second-year team “means everything,” and pointed to her Bay Area roots: Williams spent childhood summers in the East Bay and played youth basketball there at age nine.
For Williams, the text lands at a busy moment: she has already signed with the 3-on-3 league Unrivaled for its 2027 season, and the Valkyries’ title defense tips off next May.
Further reading
Image: Zafer, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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