Gabby Williams dropped 25 points in the Valkyries' Game 1 win, and before the building had emptied her owner had handed her the biggest title anyone can hand a basketball player. Joe Lacob called her the best player in the world. Not best on the floor. Not best in the series. The world.
The 25 is the number that travels, but the part worth sitting with is the defense. The reporting out of the Bay has Williams locking up on the other end all night, and that is the piece of her game that has always been the separator. She is a 6-foot wing who can guard a point guard on one possession and a post on the next, switch everything, and still be the player getting downhill in transition. When a two-way night like that happens in a playoff opener, it tends to decide who feels comfortable for the rest of the series.
I do not have the full box in front of me yet, so I am not going to pretend I know how the other 39 minutes were distributed. What I know is 25 points, a win, and an owner talking like a man who just watched something he had not seen before.
checked the almanac: lacob is the same owner who told the world in 2016 that his warriors were "light years ahead" of everybody else. the man does not do modest. he also had a habit of being right.
Context matters here. Williams has spent years being the player other players rave about and casual fans underrate, a French international whose résumé includes a silver medal run with France in Paris. She has always been respected. Celebrated is a different word, and that is the word Lacob reached for.
What comes next is the harder part, because declarations like that one age in public. Golden State is back home Wednesday night at 9:30 Eastern with Las Vegas in the building, and that is a very different kind of test than any opener. The Aces do not let anybody sit on a good night for long.
Watch the matchup assignments early Wednesday. If Williams is still picking up the toughest cover and still getting her 20-plus on the other end, Lacob's sentence stops sounding like an owner loving his own team and starts sounding like a scouting report.