Chicago arrived at Golden State on Tuesday night with a 1-0 record and the kind of roster churn that usually comes early, not in the middle of a season’s opening stretch. The Sky were playing the second stop on a four-game road trip when they faced the Valkyries at 10 PM ET on WNBA League Pass, and both teams came in unbeaten.
Chicago’s first win came Saturday, when it beat expansion side Portland 98-83 behind key contributions from Rickea Jackson and Skylar Diggins. Days before that game, the Sky cut 2025 WNBA draft pick Hailey Van Lith, who later joined the Connecticut Sun. Coach Tyler Marsh has made clear he is not treating the back end of the roster as dead weight, saying he does not think you can go wrong with a lot of good, capable guards and that the club is not just stock-holding players but looking for ways to use everyone who can contribute.
Golden State, meanwhile, opened its second WNBA season with a 2-0 start built on wins over Seattle and Phoenix. The Valkyries beat Phoenix 95-79 on Sunday, with Gabby Williams scoring 19 points and adding five rebounds, three assists and four steals. Head coach Natalie Nakase said Williams’ selflessness fits the team perfectly and that the club is excited by how well she is settling in.
That is what made Tuesday’s game matter before the ball was even tipped. Chicago was trying to steady itself on the road after a busy roster decision, while Golden State was trying to protect an early run that has already put it in position to talk about a postseason return. When two undefeated teams meet this early, the result does more than add a mark in the standings; it starts to show which early wins were built to last.
The friction for Chicago is obvious. The Sky won with added guard depth, then quickly moved on from Van Lith, a choice that shows how little room there is for sentiment in the first weeks of the schedule. Golden State has the opposite feel for now, with Nakase praising a player whose game is built on doing the little things that keep a fast start moving. One team is sorting out who belongs. The other is showing why its pieces fit.
By the end of the night, the bigger question was not simply who won in May. It was whether Chicago’s reshaped guard rotation can hold up over a long road trip, and whether Golden State’s early chemistry is strong enough to carry a club with postseason hopes into the grind that follows these first clean weeks.
