It really is a great color.

As a sea of purple — violet, lavender, lilac, whatever you want to call it — engulfed me on both sides of the Bay Wednesday, that was easily my most pervasive thought.

Simplistic? Sure. But the simple truths sometimes hit the hardest.

That Valkyries‘ purple is distinctive, but not garish. It’s accessible, but unique.

It’s effectively the first big thing the organization did after being accepted into the league— the team name, the color.

And they nailed ’em.

So why is it a surprise that they’ve nailed everything else since?

That Valkyries purple has been everywhere in the Bay for the past two years. On flags outside houses, on T-shirts of early-morning runners, on the bumpers of cars on the highway. And Wednesday it was standing three-deep, five-deep, and in some places too-deep along the Embarcadero in San Francisco to celebrate their WNBA championship.

That purple: It’s the color of an expansion franchise that walked into a broken, desperate sports market and a wayward, overwhelmed league and exposed every lazy excuse in the book.

They showed the WNBA how to actually be first-class — an operation deserving of the ever-growing attention the league was receiving.

They showed the Bay Area sports cabal the right way to treat this region’s fans.

They became the model franchise locally and nationally.

And to think this is only their start.

Yes, the Golden State Valkyries didn’t just build a championship team out of thin air in two years. They staged an intervention.

In a region that had strong communities starved for recognition, in a place where significant pockets had been stripped of their sporting soul by carpetbagging owners and corporate rot, the Valkyries proved winning isn’t a financial mystery.

You just have to give a damn about the people buying the tickets.

They’re proud, but not brash. They didn’t arrive with puffed chests, empty PR slogans or private equity jargon. They arrived with a plan.

Team owner Joe Lacob, president Jess Smith and general manager Ohemaa Nyanin hacked every glaring market inefficiency in the sport of basketball and the place they call home.

On the court, they realized the rest of the WNBA was running from the nitty-gritty fact that defense is the most important part of the game.

And in two years, using spare parts and a bit of cash, they built an absolute buzzsaw around Veronica Burton’s snarling on-ball defense, Kiah Stokes’ immovable rim protection and Gabby Williams doing everything on a hardwood floor except selling popcorn at halftime.

They hired a coach in Natalie Nakase whose relentlessness proved contagious.

Obviously, it worked better than anyone could have expected.

And off the floor, the Valkyries exploited a Bay Area sports public starving for something that didn’t feel like an algorithmically optimized shakedown – something that felt true and representative of their region.

They didn’t treat fans like monetization funnels – though, boy, are they lucrative. (Team owner Peter Guber literally said “cha-ching” three times on the celebration stage Wednesday.)

No, they treated them like partners in a battle, whether it was originally their idea or not.

Of course, you can’t talk about women’s sports in 2026 without the surrounding swamp gas.

It’s been used as the cheap, cynical wedge issue of our time, manufactured by grifters who couldn’t name three players on a title-winning roster if their lives depended on it.

I saw a guy at the championship celebration in Oakland — apparently a credentialed member of the media — strutting around in a “Protect Women Athletes” hat.

Anyone who has watched a college football game featuring a team in a political battleground state in recent weeks knows that slogan is a rhetorical tripwire, a bad-faith grievance dressed up as chivalry.

The loudest voices on that non-issue don’t actually watch the games. They don’t care about the craft, the blown ACLs or the defensive tactics; they just want a culture-war prop.

Sounds as exhausting as having to face the Valkyries’ defense for 40 minutes.

Because I don’t need to tell you that the Bay Area is a unique place. Nor do I need to remind you that it’s a place that wears its values on its sleeve, even if we sometimes fall short of practicing what we preach.

But love it or hate it, you know what we’re about in this part of the Golden State.

And the Valkyries made it clear, early and often, that they stood for something — and not just in corporate jargon. Their unrepentant support of LGBTQ+ communities and their efforts to reach other groups shoved to the side by the corporate sporting apparatus mattered to their fans. It turned a new relationship into something more significant with shocking expediency.

Their stances were hardly surprising, but their candor was. There isn’t anything artificial or plastic about any of this.

Pair that with their main summer competition in this market deciding, through blunder and then PR-written bluster, to do the opposite, and suddenly what was an undeniable cultural phenomenon in Northern California — this upstart WNBA team — jumped into hyperdrive.

Because there have always been successful WNBA teams. No, they weren’t successful this fast, but they were successful nevertheless.

But this team clearly resonated with this market in a way that I imagine is unique to the league.

Two seasons of sold-out home games tell the story. A home-court advantage that rivals any in basketball — men’s or women’s, at any level — speaks volumes. The aubergine omnipresence proves the point.

Operating from a place of truth is freeing.

The Valkyries took that entire phony circus — the political football that is women’s sports at its highest level — and punted it back to the bad-faith actors.

Because, when it comes down to it, nobody in Chase Center is looking for a political lecture on what they should believe and how they should feel. (Though I’m sure there are thousands who would gladly offer one.) They’re just trying to share a moment with 18,000 people as some incredibly talented athletes dive for a loose ball.

The new team was unencumbered by the idea of trying to please everyone; of always trying to say and do the right thing; of needing to find an identity.

“When I think of this group, we are relentless — joyfully relentless,” Valkyries team president Jess Smith said at the Oakland celebration.

“I think what has happened here is a shared understanding of our success and the weight of what this means,” Smith said. “It’s not just winning a championship. It’s not just selling out our arena. It’s showing the world what’s possible.”

“To me it’s just a representation of what’s best in this world.”

It sounds sentimental until you watch them play.

Then you realize she’s dead right.

The Bay Area didn’t need another billionaire’s real estate scheme or an artificial rebrand.

It needed a team with a pulse, a spine and a purpose.

The Valkyries brought all three and made their color represent something bigger in the process.

And they’re just getting started.

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