Valkyries vs. Storm: Janelle Salaun's Five Threes Sink Seattle as Golden State Opens With a 91-80 Win

With 4:50 left on Friday night at Climate Pledge Arena, Mackenzie Holmes scored to make it a 15-point game, and the Seattle Storm could at least keep telling themselves a story. Janelle Salaun ended story time. She hit a 23-footer at 4:26, a 25-footer at 3:41 and a 26-footer at 2:53, three triples in 93 seconds, and suddenly Golden State was up 87-67 and the only question left was parking.

Salaun finished with 20 points off the bench and matched her career high with five 3-pointers, and the Golden State Valkyries opened 2026 with a 91-80 road win. They pulled it off after losing Tiffany Hayes and Cecilia Zandalasini to first-half injuries, which makes the whole thing slightly more annoying for everybody else in the league.

A Nervous Start, Then a Slow Leak

It didn't look like this early. Kayla Thornton took a Hayes pass and drilled a 26-footer for the first bucket of the season, but Seattle settled in, took a 24-23 edge out of the opening quarter and led by as many as seven before halftime. Hayes was gone by then with a left pinky injury, having played four minutes. Zandalasini gave Golden State eight points in seven minutes before a jaw injury took her out in the second, and neither one came back.

So naturally, that's when the Valkyries took over. Veronica Burton had 14 by halftime, Golden State won the second quarter 26-17, and a one-point deficit became a 49-41 lead. Coach Natalie Nakase saw the same thing everyone else did. "You can see there's just a little bit of nerves from the jump, but once we got into a rhythm on both ends, we played like Valkyries defense," she said.

Seattle got a 27-22 fourth quarter out of it, with Dominique Malonga scoring nine in the last 2:37, but that was mostly about the final score looking more polite.

Salaun Brought the Heat, Chen Brought the Second Half

Salaun went 7 of 16 from the field and 5 of 11 from deep in 27 minutes. That isn't surgical, and it doesn't need to be. It's what you want from a bench scorer whose whole job is to keep shooting until the other team's game plan falls apart. "It's good to see that her confidence is super high," Nakase said, adding that Salaun has been asking for tougher defensive assignments, too.

Kaitlyn Chen was the second-half problem. She went into the break scoreless and came out of it with all 14 of her points, a career high, on 5 of 10 shooting and 2 of 3 from three. "I just felt more comfortable as the game went on," Chen said, which is one way of describing what happened to Seattle's perimeter defense.

Burton ran things with 16 points, six assists and a team-high 31 minutes, and Thornton's 13 points and eight rebounds did a lot of unglamorous work. Gabby Williams, Golden State's big offseason get, came back to the city where she played from 2022 to 2025 and shot just 2 of 9, yet still found a way to fill out the rest of the sheet with seven points, six rebounds and four assists. Kiah Stokes added six points and a game-high three blocks in her Valkyries debut.

Malonga led Seattle with 21 points and eight rebounds on 8 of 15 shooting. Zia Cooke gave the Storm 15 and seven boards off the bench, and Jade Melbourne scored 13 on a tidy 4 of 5. Flau'jae Johnson, the No. 8 pick in the draft, went for 12 on 3 of 12, with all three makes coming from deep. That's a heat-check line if there ever was one. Lexie Brown had no points and four turnovers in 22 minutes, finishing minus-19. Seattle also has to get by without starter Ezi Magbegor, who is expected to miss six to eight weeks with a right foot injury, so there are plenty of minutes to go around while this group figures itself out.

The Third Quarter Was the Whole Game

The final score undersells how decisive the third was. Golden State led 56-47 with 5:35 left in the period, then scored eight straight to go up 64-47. By the end of the quarter it was 69-53, and Seattle had been held to 12 points in 10 minutes. The Storm shot 41 percent for the game, basically matching Golden State's 42. They outrebounded the Valkyries 41-35 and tied them with 13 offensive boards apiece. But they spent the entire night trading twos for threes, and that exchange rate never works.

The Math Problem

• 15 of 37: Golden State from three, one make short of the franchise record, with seven different players connecting.
• 45-27: Points from behind the arc. Seattle went 9 of 26.
• 48-35: Bench scoring, Valkyries over Storm, with Salaun and Chen doing most of the damage.
• 12-5: Points off turnovers. Golden State took 12 from Seattle's 14 giveaways and allowed five off its own nine.
• 12: Seattle's third-quarter point total.

New Faces, Same Bite

Golden State is 1-0, 1-0 on the road, with a new cast already contributing. Williams and Stokes started, while Miela Sowah and Ndjakalenga Mwenentanda got into their first career WNBA games in the closing minutes. The home opener is Sunday against Phoenix, and the medical updates on Hayes and Zandalasini are now the most interesting storyline on the roster.

Seattle is 0-1, 0-1 at home, and heads to Connecticut for a Sunday game. There's real talent here, and Malonga looks like a matchup problem, but the Storm need to generate more than nine threes when the other side is hitting 15.

One Song on Repeat

Everybody knows what you do on album release day. You find the one track, you put it on repeat, and you don't apologize to anyone. Salaun took 11 threes on Friday. Five went in. Three of them came in a row, from farther and farther out, right when the game needed closing. Nakase called it nerves at the start. By the end, it was the only song playing in the building, and Seattle couldn't find the skip button.

Stats from the official box score via ESPN. Game details as reported by the Associated Press. Quotes and team notes from the Golden State Valkyries.