The first Game Seven in WNBA Finals history took place on Saturday, and the Golden State Valkyries, in just their second year of existence, were ready. Playing at home, in front of a sold-out crowd crackling with enough energy to raise the roof, the Valkyries won the whole damn thing, 68–63, against the Atlanta Dream.

Earlier this year, the Valkyries rechristened their San Francisco arena Ballhalla, after the grand dining hall—called Valhalla—where the female warriors of Norse myth would bring only the bravest fallen soldiers. The true Valkyrie on Saturday was the team’s general manager, Ohemaa Nyanin, who built a championship team in two years by gathering together a disparate group of players who became the true “warriors” in the Bay. They claimed Ballhalla as their own and, suffice it to say, Halloween in the Bay was lit.

The Most Valuable Player of the finals was Gabby Williams, who, after a tepid two-point first half, scored an astounding 28 second-half points and played her brand of stellar defense all the way through. She’s a leader, a charisma-bomb, and the sort of player anyone would be proud to call “the face of the WNBA.”

Even more gratifying, given the recent anti-trans hysteria that has overtaken professional sports, Williams has always shown solidarity with the trans community, saying in August, “I would welcome a trans athlete on my team or against my team, anytime. I don’t think it’s a problem in the world. It’s just another way to kind of attack trans people.”

Such a basic statement of solidarity took great courage, given that far-right-wingers and a viciously obsessed Fox News spent much of the 2026 season attacking the WNBA by whipping up its rapidly aging viewership into a frenzy over the thought of a—currently nonexistent—trans hooper playing in the WNBA.

Media Matters reported that Fox News—in a time of war and a spiraling energy crisis—spent 13 and a half hours of airtime across over 200 segments on the WNBA from late June to early August. The stories were not about the incredible players and stories emerging from the league’s most successful season in its 30 years of existence. Instead, they incessantly denounced the WNBA’s unwillingness to condemn and vilify trans athletes, even though—again—there is not one trans player in the WNBA.

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Fox News also whipped up another nonexistent controversy, whining and whinging that the league was permissively and violently racist against white players because athletes like the white and straight Caitlin Clark were being fouled too hard. They even sang the praises of a rump group of congresspeople willing to hold hearings on the matter. Fox News never gave a hot damn about the WNBA until it could become a stalking horse to attack Black women—particularly Black queer women. They also went after any white player not willing to play the aggrieved victim. To have the great Gabby Williams stand against anti-trans hate mattered. After the game, when Williams looked into the camera, amid the confetti and hugs, and said, “This is for the gays,” that warmed the heart.

It all speaks to a team that seems to really understand the rhythm and the passion of a city that has claimed them as their own. They stand with San Francisco and Oakland, and unlike so many athletes who live in rarified air and gated mansions, they are the community. Because of that, the Bay has adopted the Valkyries like few others in the rich history of sports in the region. When I was in San Francisco and Oakland during the playoffs, I saw violet everywhere: from uniforms on the street to banners in the urgent care unit (burned hand, spilled tea). Then, after the victory on Halloween, the two cities erupted into the kind of rapturous celebration that takes place when the home team not only wins a championship Game Seven—nothing like it—but does so on the Bay’s infamous night of all parties. A friend in the Mission neighborhood of San Francisco told me that the streets were flooded with Valkyrie vampires, Valkyrie zombies—everyone was out for Valkyrie-themed Halloween. October 31, he told me, has always been special in the Bay Area. “But this time it was a different level,” he said. “It is really something I haven’t experienced before, with women taking center stage.”

In the Bay Area this Halloween, the only appropriate color to wear was violet. And though the costume may come off on November 1, the feeling goes on.