Built to win

Happy Monday! And congratulations to the WNBA’s newest champion — as, apparently, expansion teams are supposed to be good immediately now. The Golden State Valkyries beat Atlanta in Saturday’s Game 7 to finish one of the fastest title build-ups in modern pro sports history. We’ll look at just how unusual that rise was below, and whether Golden State had some secret sauce to help them get there. Plus, Kimi Antonelli became the youngest F1 champion ever, the NFL’s last unbeaten team — Minnesota — finally fell, and the Buccaneers somehow won a football game without completing a single pass. (Yes, you read that right.) Here’s what we’re watching today:

The Main Events

All listed times are Eastern.

WNBA:
🏀🏆 WNBA Finals: Valkyries win! 🎉

Football:
🏈 Monday Night Football: Bears (38%) at Seahawks (62%) - 8:15 p.m. (ESPN/ABC)
🏈🏆 Super Bowl check-in: 49ers 18% to win the NFL title
🏈🏆 College Football Playoff check-in: Georgia 23% to win the national title 

NBA:
🏀 Thunder (39%) at Cavaliers (61%) - 7 p.m. (NBCSN)
🏀 Pelicans (35%) at Grizzlies (65%) - 8 p.m.
🏀 Celtics (36%) at Rockets (64%) - 8:30 p.m.
🏀🏆 NBA title check-in: Spurs 24% to win

NHL:
🏒 Golden Knights (51%) at Bruins (49%) - 7 p.m. (NHLN)
🏒 Red Wings (38%) at Panthers (62%) - 7 p.m.
🏒 Avalanche (69%) at Blackhawks (31%) - 8 p.m.
🏒🏆 Stanley Cup check-in: Hurricanes/Avalanche 11% to win

Soccer:
⚽ Premier League: Newcastle United (44%) at Everton (28%) - 3 p.m.
⚽🏆 Champions League check-in: Paris Saint-Germain 21% to win
⚽🏆 Premier League title check-in: Arsenal FC 74% to win
⚽🏆 Europa League check-in: SL Benfica 23% to win
⚽🏆 MLS title check-in: Nashville SC 20% to win MLS Cup
⚽🏆 NWSL title check-in: San Diego Wave FC 23% to win 

Expansion speedrun 🏆

As mentioned above, the Golden State Valkyries captured the 2026 WNBA title over the weekend, coming back from down 37-28 against the Atlanta Dream shortly after halftime to close Game 7 on a victorious 40-26 run. Series MVP Gabby Williams had just 2 points at halftime, but she exploded for 28 (!) in the second half to key Golden State’s surge.

The big story, of course, is that the Valkyries didn’t even have a WNBA roster as recently as 23 months ago — they joined the league as its 13th team, and first expansion club in 17 years, starting last season. Now, at the end of their second season of existence, they have speedrun their way to a championship.

How rare is that? Out of the “Big Four” men’s pro leagues (MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL) plus the WNBA, no team who began play since 1960 has ever taken so few years to secure their first championship in franchise history:

The only comparable cases from outside those leagues come from Major League Soccer, where the Chicago Fire won the 1998 MLS Cup in their first season of existence, and Atlanta United FC won in Year 2 in 2018. But otherwise, it’s traditionally been next to impossible to build a contender this quickly in a major pro sports league.

And in fact, that has usually been by design. Leagues are happy to collect expansion fees — Golden State ownership paid a whopping $50 million to join the W back in 2023 — but established owners don’t exactly want to spread wins around to newcomers if they can help it. That means teams have to be built through expansion drafts, where new teams have to rummage around through the bargain-bin of talent left behind after existing teams have protected all or most of the players they want to keep.

Without access to any good players, for the most part, it tends to take a long time for expansion clubs to even reach a league-average level. To wit: the median modern-era Big Four+WNBA expansion team was only a bit better than the 30th percentile of the league by its fifth season of play, according to the Elo ratings. Even successful examples of new franchises will be around the 75th percentile by their third or fourth season, after usually experiencing big leaps between Years 2 and 3:

Golden State, though, jumped from the 42nd percentile in Elo last year to the 97th this year, the best any recent expansion team has ever been this quickly into its existence.

Some of this involved finding good talent in the expansion draft — Veronica Burton, for instance, was left available (by the Connecticut Sun) in the draft, as were Cecilia Zandalasini and Kayla Thornton. The Valkyries then further built out their roster by adding Williams, plus other veterans like Kiah Stokes, Kaila Charles and Tiffany Hayes. Shrewd player acquisitions by general manager Ohemaa Nyanin and excellent leadership by head coach Natalie Nakase helped bring it all together for a championship.

But if this year’s two expansion squads, the Toronto Tempo and Portland Fire — to say nothing of future newcomers in Cleveland, Detroit and Philly — are hoping for the same second-year success as Golden State, that might be setting expectations a bit unrealistically. Not only were Toronto and Portland nowhere near as good in their debuts as Golden State last year, but the Valkyries probably benefitted greatly from the nearly two-decade backlog of talent during the WNBA’s long interregnum between expansions.

Each successive new franchise gets less and less of that advantage, since the talent pool is drained with every additional team. So it could be that the Valkyries came along at exactly the right moment to win this early — not only by making all the right moves, but by having a once-in-a-generation opportunity for first dibs on available talent to build a winner overnight, before the rest of the league's newcomers could follow in their footsteps.

You shall not (complete a) pass!

Unlike those snowflakes over in baseball, football will famously play through just about any weather — neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet, nor hail shall keep the NFL from its appointed rounds. But after watching Sunday’s slopfest between the Buccaneers and Falcons, maybe they ought to rethink that whole approach. Atlanta QB Michael Penix Jr. completed nearly as many passes to Bucs defenders (4) as he did to actual Falcons teammates (8), while Tampa Bay essentially decided to give up on the aerial game entirely. Bucs QB Baker Mayfield completed zero passes (on 3 attempts), letting rushers Bucky Irving (170 yards) and Kenneth Gainwell (140) do the work instead. And it worked! Tampa Bay won 16-0, becoming the first team to win an NFL game without completing a single pass since the OJ Simpson-led (😬) Buffalo Bills on September 29, 1974:

What else we’re reading

Smart, short reads we liked while building today’s odds.

🌍 “The Week in International Sport: 3x3 basketball, South Africa in test cricket and Caroline Harvey” by Ben Wylie
🏈 “It’s Over for the Eagles” by Jeremy Keys
🏀 “When Does an NBA Record Start to Mean Something?” by Shax
🏀 “Four big thoughts as we enter the WNBA offseason” by Katie McInerney
🏈 “The Quarterback Evaluation Project” by Robbie Marriage

Next on deck…

Tuesday (11/3)
🏈 CFB: Buffalo at Miami (OH)
🏀 NBA: No games. (Election Day) 🗳️
🏒 NHL: Oilers at Devils
⚽ Champions League: Atlético Madrid vs. Bayern Munich

Wednesday (11/4)
🏈 CFB: Central Michigan at Eastern Michigan
🏀 NBA: Timberwolves at Rockets
🏒 NHL: Blackhawks at Panthers
⚽ Champions League: RB Leipzig vs. Manchester City

Thursday (11/5)
🏈 Thursday Night Football: Jaguars at Ravens
🏈 CFB: JMU at Southern Miss
🏀 NBA: Heat at Warriors
🏒 NHL: Bruins at Penguins
⚽ Europa League: Marseille at Bayer Leverkusen