First Valkyries home playoff game won't be at Chase Center due to tennis event; WNBA star voices frustration

The Golden State Valkyries are one of the best stories in the WNBA this summer, and on Thursday they became the first expansion team in league history to make the playoffs in their inagural season. 

The 23-18 Valkyries, who are on track to earn the No. 6 seed in the playoffs, have exceeded expectations this season thanks in large part to their incredible home-court advantage at Chase Center, a.k.a. Ballhalla. The Valkyries have sold out every single home game, and their average attendance of 18,064 not only leads the league, but is also on pace to be an all-time record. 

Ballhalla will not host the franchise's first ever home playoff game, however, the team confirmed Thursday. Instead, the Valkyries will relocate to the SAP Center in San Jose. 

"After exploring every possible option to move things around and host this game at Chase Center, SAP Center emerged as the right fit for this historic event," the team wrote, in part, in a statement to season ticket holders which was obtained by SF Gate. "We vetted several venues, including Oakland Arena, which has a scheduling conflict, and are thrilled to partner with SAP Center for our First Round game."

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The Laver Cup, an international tennis tournament between Team Europe and Team World, has the Chase Center booked during the first round of the WNBA playoffs. 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 Valkyries are not able to move into a top-four spot, which means they'll be the lower seed in the best-of-three first round of the playoffs. The lower seed will host their lone home game on either Sept. 16 or 17, which meant the Valkyries were forced to find a new home for that contest. 

Earlier this week, SFGate spoke with New York 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. 

As reasonable as all of that is, it is still be a letdown for the team, their fans and the league that they had 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.