The Golden State Valkyries are doing something you almost never see in professional sports—packing up their own hardwood floor and moving it across the Bay.
After getting hammered by 29 points in Game 1 against the Minnesota Lynx, Golden State will play its do-or-die Game 2 on Wednesday night not at Chase Center, but at SAP Center in San Jose. Chase was booked out for the Laver Cup, a tennis event, forcing the team to improvise.
So the Valkyries decided if they couldn’t have their building, they’d at least bring their floor. Literally. The Chase Center court is being trucked south and laid down inside SAP, giving the players as close to home as possible in an unfamiliar arena.
“It still feels like our place,” head coach Natalie Nakase said when asked about the unusual move. “We wanted the team to look down and see what they’re used to. And we know the fans are gonna show up, no matter where we play.”
And fans have been showing up all year. The Valkyries, in just their first season, have turned the WNBA attendance record books upside down—selling out all 22 of their home games at Chase and averaging over 18,000 fans a night. That’s not just good by WNBA standards; it’s a number that stacks up with, and even surpasses, more than half of the NBA’s teams.
For the players, the floor isn’t just a surface. It’s the bounce of the ball, the feel under their shoes, even the sight lines. In the middle of a playoff fight, all those little details can matter. It’s a psychological edge as much as anything.
The logistics aren’t small—moving a full court isn’t cheap or easy—but Golden State’s front office clearly felt it was worth the trouble. And in a first-year franchise trying to cement an identity, it sends a strong message: this team is serious about making every advantage count.
The big question now is whether the change of scenery, even with the Chase Center floor beneath them, helps slow down a Lynx team that ran away with Game 1.
What’s certain is the Valkyries will have their fans, “Ballhalla,” in full voice down in San Jose. If Golden State can feed off that energy and the comfort of their home floor, this series might not be over just yet.
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