Valkyries Celebrate First WNBA Title With Estimated 400,000 Fans on San Francisco's Waterfront

In 2024, the Golden State Valkyries had never played a game. On Wednesday, an estimated 400,000 people lined the San Francisco waterfront to thank them for a championship.

The Golden State Valkyries celebrated their first WNBA title with a parade along the Embarcadero on Nov. 4, four days after beating the Atlanta Dream 68-63 in Game 7 of the Finals. The crowd estimate comes from ESPN (opens in a new tab). The day started across the bay with a kickoff rally at Jack London Square in Oakland, where the franchise is headquartered, before the team rode a ferry to the Ferry Building and rolled roughly two miles down the Embarcadero to Second and King streets, outside Oracle Park.

Oakland First, Then the Waterfront

The order of events mattered. The Valkyries play at Chase Center in San Francisco, but the franchise is based in Oakland, and the club made sure the East Bay got its moment before the main event. According to KQED (opens in a new tab), Finals MVP Gabby Williams spoke at the Jack London Square rally, thanking teammates, family and fans, and embraced Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee. Williams told the crowd, "I couldn't stop smiling, because I was like, 'Look where I am.'"

Then came the boat ride and the buses. Players rode violet buses under a purple and black balloon arch, Dykes on Bikes led the procession, and rapper LaRussell performed, per KQED. Owner Joe Lacob rode in a lowrider, Kehlani rode with Mayor Lee, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie walked the route and Rep. Nancy Pelosi waved from a cable car. Fans could start staking out spots at 9 a.m., the earliest the city allowed, and some did not wait for permission to show up early. KQED found one fan who flew in from Hawaii and claimed a spot by 7:30.

The city had cleared the route for a party. San Francisco's official announcement (opens in a new tab) scheduled the parade from noon to 2 p.m., shut down streets along the Embarcadero and added extra ferry service on the Oakland and Vallejo routes. "In just two years, the Golden State Valkyries have taken the sports world by storm," Lurie said in the release.

The Best Moments

The champions did not exactly treat the route like a formal procession. ESPN's rundown reads like a list of things a team does when it has been waiting its whole existence to do them.

Williams carried the Finals MVP trophy and led the crowd through the call and response that became a Chase Center ritual during the playoffs. Williams and Kiah Stokes sprayed champagne on fans, and Stokes took a turn on the microphone. Kaitlyn Chen wore a hot dog costume as a callback to a Game 7 outfit, then dropped the hot dog while filming a video. Chen and Veronica Burton sprinted along the barricades high-fiving fans, and Tiffany Hayes did the same from another bus. Head coach Natalie Nakase jumped into a mosh pit of fans, and somebody handed her a bottle of tequila, per ESPN.

The quotes were just as loose. "I couldn't wait to just hug these freaking goobers," Williams said, according to ESPN. Burton put it more simply: "This is a dream come true."

Nakase kept her message simple. "Love is the most powerful thing in the world, and these guys embody love," she said at the rally.

How They Got Here

The parade capped a Finals that will be hard to top. Golden State trailed the series 2-1 before Nakase reworked her starting lineup, inserting Kaila Charles and Hayes, and the Valkyries won the next four games, per the AP. Williams scored 30 points in Game 7, and KQED notes that 28 came in the second half, a WNBA record for any playoff half. Stokes set a Finals record with 19 blocks across the series and won the fourth championship of her career.

The history goes beyond the box score. KQED reports that Nakase became the first Asian American head coach to win a WNBA championship, and that the Valkyries became the fastest expansion team in professional basketball to win a title. They did it in their second season after making the playoffs in their first, and they have sold out every home game since the franchise debuted.

Hayes, who spent most of her career in Atlanta before beating the Dream for her first ring, summed up the business case after Game 7. "This is just what happens when you invest in women's sports," Hayes said, per KQED. "We ain't going nowhere."

The Next Chapter

Lacob, who promised a title within the franchise's first five years, beat his own timeline by three. "The best is yet to come, of course," he said, per ESPN.

The Valkyries will have little time to rest. Chase Center hosts the 2027 WNBA All-Star Game on July 31, the offseason brings free agency and roster decisions, and a team that won with depth and defense now has to defend a title with a target on its back.

That is a problem for later. For one afternoon, the franchise that played its first game in 2025 got the kind of reception the Bay Area usually saves for the Warriors and the Giants. Ballhalla, it turns out, travels well. It just needed a ferry.

Sources: ESPN, KQED, the Associated Press and the City and County of San Francisco. More WNBA coverage on Undrafted.

Photo: Getty Images via WNBA.