WNBA FINALS: DREAM VS. VALKYRIES

October 31, 2026

Karl Smesko

Atlanta Dream

Game 7: Postgame

Golden State Valkyries 68, Atlanta Dream 63

Q. I know it's only been a short amount of time to sort of process this but just where do you feel like the team can take a step forward in terms of accomplishing the season, how proud are you of them forget to go this point?

KARL SMESKO: You know, I love our team. I'm proud of our players, the season they have had is remarkable. Obviously it's beyond frustrating that we didn't finish what we set out to do today but it doesn't change how I feel about our players. I love them.

The effort they put in this year was remarkable, coming together as a team, fantastic. I feel very fortunate that I was around to coach them.

Q. What do you think ended up making the difference in the game tonight?

KARL SMESKO: I think there were a lot of things, like the very beginning of the game, we just did not play with our pace for five minutes before we actually kind of moved the ball and got into what we wanted to get into.

Five minutes, can't get those five minutes back, and you're down six, eight nothing, and we have to come back and we did. We started to play our basketball.

And then I thought when we came out in the third quarter, it was kind of the same thing, like no, we can't go backwards now. We have to continue with our pace and getting the shots that we want.

You know, obviously Gabby took it to another level and she was getting to her spots and she was getting downhill to her strong hand, things that we were pretty good most of the series about eliminating.

But I mean, you look back at several stretches where if you had just played those stretches a little bit better, right now, the mood for our team would be a lot different.

Q. What was your message to the team after the loss, and how can you use this to motivate not only yourself but the team next year?

KARL SMESKO: It's pretty much the same as what I said. I told them I loved them and that I was really proud of everything that they accomplished this year, and that there were going to be no words to soften what we feel right now. And we're going to have to feel it.

And then we're going to have to learn from it, and then we're going to have to come back and figure out how to get better. We congratulate Golden State for an incredible year, an incredible series here.

From our end, for a series, we probably played the best defense you could play in a series without winning the series. So we've got to go back and figure out how we can make our offense more efficient and be in a situation even when you go against a great defense, we can kind of dictate the shots that we want a little better than we did consistently in this series.

Q. Angel mentioned that in the off-season, one thing that would be great to see would be the growth of some of the players that kind of made contributions from the bench. Izzy Borlase I want to talk specifically about the contribution she made and some of the growth you can see from her in the off-season.

KARL SMESKO: I thought she came in, especially in the second half. She had a three. She was being aggressive with her offense, trying to get good shots. We kind of stuck with her, thinking we needed a little offensive boost, and she looked comfortable.

But this year, I think she's had an amazing year, not just in the W. To be the MVP in her Australian league, the World Cup, first year in the WNBA, all the growth that she had this year, that's just kind of a remarkable 12 months.

I think the sky's the limit for what she can become.

Q. Wondering if we could talk specifically about what Golden State did to try to slow down both Rhyne and Angel, kept them in check a little bit for the whole game.

KARL SMESKO: I think, well, one, they put excellent defenders on them. But for us, the movement and the screening, you know, it never works -- when you're playing a great defensive team, and it's just like a lot of isolation, rather than working together to create shots it, just never worked for us in the series.

For us, it was about pace, actions, get into the next action, and that's when we got good shots. You know that, was probably our biggest weakness in the series was doing that consistently and I really thought that after Game 6, especially that first half, how we were playing offensively that, it would carry over until today. There's really just too many empty possessions.

Q. Late in the game looked like the Valkyries were focused on spreading the floor for Gabby and taking advantage of that size mismatch against Canada. As far as I could tell you didn't send any help defenders. I was just wondering why that was so.

KARL SMESKO: We just didn't guard her the way we wanted to guard her. We were trying to dictate which direction, and would he weren't going to -- we call it the danger zone but we don't going to let her shoot anywhere near the three-point line and we were going to make her put it on the floor. We knew where our help was supposed to come. Just sometimes in the heat of the moment, you have breakdowns.

Unfortunately, today we had more miscommunications and kind of breakdowns, especially that second half, than what we've had all series. But we did know where the help was supposed to come, and we did know how we were supposed to guard Gabby. And give Gabby all the credit. If we break down and we don't execute it at a high level, she made us pay, and she made us pay repeatedly, and just really got it going. I give her all the credit.

Q. Congratulations on your season and making it this far. Your players talked about how much you poured into them throughout the season. I wanted to ask you, how have they poured into you as a coach?

KARL SMESKO: Probably a hard time to answer that question because I am filled with love for them and at the same time, great pain that we were not able to accomplish what I thought we were capable of accomplishing. But the willingness to get better and work every day and come together as a team, all those things, as a coach, you're very proud of what they were able to accomplish. And the way they pulled together in tough situations.

So you know, I appreciate all the support that they have shown me for the season and all the work and effort that they have put in, you know, to make it probably the best season in Dream history, albeit not what we wanted at the end here.

Q. I wanted to ask you about the atmosphere in both arenas for this series, and what you hope this kind of excitement means for the league and this just sort of fan excitement about what happened in this series.

KARL SMESKO: Well, I've been to some W Finals before, and there's been great environments at the Finals that I went to as a fan. But both places, Atlanta, Golden State, I just thought this whole series was at even a higher level than what I witnessed before. The energy in the arena tonight was amazing. When it was in Atlanta, it was top-notch.

I think the W is in such a great position right now. Continues to grow. And I think there's so many great players in the league right now, it's just going to continue to grow. An exciting seven-game series, I think, helps build that even further.

Q. Before the series, I asked you about cross-matching that Naz Hillmon had seen throughout the season. Game 7 Gabby Williams was on her. How do you feel that impacted your offense and your offense dealt with that?

KARL SMESKO: Yeah, I thought that was smart because like we had been using Naz more as a screener and gave her the opportunity to switch more of those screens, so then we kind of tried to switch who was setting some of the screens. But really, I thought if we could just get into transition more and get the actions that we wanted to get to in transition, that they were going to have to switch out some other things any ways, and some of those matchup things wouldn't have been as important.

But if you get through a possession and there's no screening action, no cutting action, you know, then they can just load up to the ball and kind of limit what kind of shots you're going to get.

So I thought it was a good move by them and I just didn't think that we executed our offense the way we did in Game 6.