Valkyries first home playoff game may not be at Chase Center due to tennis; Breanna Stewart voices frustration

The Golden State Valkyries are one of the best stories in the WNBA this season, as the league’s newest expansion franchise is set to make history as the first team to make the playoffs in their inaugural season. 

The Valkyries are 22-18 on the season and currently have the No. 6 seed in the WNBA standings, and have gotten to that point thanks in part to their incredible home court advantage at the Chase Center, aka Ballhalla. The Valkyries sell out the 18,000-seat arena nightly, but when they play their first home playoff game, the team may have to play in a different arena. 

That’s because the Laver Cup, an international tennis tournament between Team Europe and Team World, has the Chase Center booked that week. The tournament runs Sept. 19-21, but they need time to lay the court and turn what is normally a basketball arena into a tennis arena and provide practice time for players. 

The road team will host their lone game in first round of the WNBA playoffs on either Sept. 16 or 17, and with the Valkyries not able to move into a top-four position, they’ll be the road team in the series. That means finding a new home for that game. 

SFGate spoke with Liberty star Breanna Stewart, who is no stranger to seeing WNBA games moved due to arena scheduling conflicts, and the future Hall of Famer lamented this as a continued problem men’s major sports leagues don’t encounter. 

“You want to think that you’re past it,” Stewart said. “We want to think that we’re better than this. Listen, sometimes it’s out of the control of everyone involved. But it’s just … you don’t see it happening with the NBA.”

Stewart, like many WNBA veterans, has seen this story play out before, and the frustration that this is still a thing that can happen even with the massive growth the league has seen recently is understandable. At the same time, this feels like a particularly unique situation with regards to the Valkyries as an expansion franchise. 

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The Valkyries issued a statement to the San Francisco Chronicle this week, acknowledging the potential conflict, while noting the Laver Cup has been on the books since before the Valkyries were even a team. 

“Due to Chase Center hosting Laver Cup, a global tennis tournament, which was booked prior to Golden State’s acquisition of the Golden State Valkyries, we are navigating potential venue impacts if the Valkyries were to make a historic playoff run in their inaugural season,” the statement read. “Our primary goal is to ensure the best possible experience for our fans and athletes. At this point, with so much uncertainty in potential playoff seeding and Playoff game dates, we do not yet know what if/any impact this will have on Valkyries home games.” 

Given the Valkyries are the first expansion team in league history to make the playoffs, even internally the franchise likely never anticipated running into this problem. Even then, this wasn’t an oversight in double booking due to low expectations. The Laver Cup is an event that books years in advance — the 2026 edition is already scheduled for the O2 Arena in London — and was scheduled before the Valkyries were officially a team. 

Perhaps if they end up with the Sept. 16 date they can squeeze it in with a quick overnight turn of the arena. But if that’s not an option, they’ll consider moving the game to Oakland, Sacramento or San Jose, per SFGate. 

As reasonable as all of that is, it would still be a letdown for the team, their fans and the league that they will likely have to find a new home and won’t be able to show off Ballhalla in their first playoff game. Even if it’s not quite the same problems that have plagued the WNBA for years in terms of being treated as second-class citizens in their own arenas, Stewart’s frustration is understandable.