SAN FRANCISCO -- Gabby Williams had a decision to make.
A free agent for the first time in her career, the WNBA All-Star felt like she was splitting hairs on where the best landing spot would be. She had spoken to coaches, heard pitches from general managers and crowdsourced her peers. Still, making what could be a career-altering decision left her with some paralysis.
Things came into focus when she got a call from Golden State Valkyries owner Joe Lacob on the eve of the signing window opening. It was different from the calls she had with her other suitors. For 20 minutes, Lacob and Williams spoke about her goals as she entered her seventh season in the W.
She told him she wanted more: more winning, more responsibility, more ways to evolve.
Then, they discussed his vision for the expansion team in its second season. "He said, 'This is why we are going to win, this is why it would be silly for you to go anywhere else, this is why we're going to have longevity. I want to build dynasties here,'" Williams said.
"Who doesn't want to come to something like that? We play this game to win championships. I've never won one, and at this point in my career, that is the top priority. ... I was so convinced that I would not win anywhere else."
Williams arrived in the Bay Area looking to take the Valkyries to the next level. She brought with her a highly touted defensive skill set that fit perfectly into Natalie Nakase's system. She quickly bought into their selfless style of play. And she leads the team in scoring with a career-high 16.3 points. Just 18 games into her stint with Golden State, it's become clear that Williams is doing more than just helping the Valkyries -- she has become the leader of the group and the centerpiece of everything they do.
"I think she is one of the best two-way players in the world," Nakase said. "Why wouldn't we want that to be part of our culture?"
Williams' defense has always been her calling card.
She won national Defensive Player of the Year as a junior at UConn in 2016-17. She was named Best Defensive Player at the Paris Olympics in 2024. And she led the WNBA in steals en route to All-Defensive first-team honors in 2025. But her offense has evolved over the past few years -- she averaged double-digit points (10.3) for the first time in 2024, her fifth full season in the league. Now with the Valkyries, it's continuing to grow.
"I want to shut down the best player and then go hit a massive shot on the other end," Williams said.
The 2024 Paris Olympics is where Williams' tenacity first caught Nakase's eye. Williams was playing with her native country, France, and averaged 15.5 points during the tournament. She was named the FIBA Best Defensive Player on her way to helping the team win a silver medal.
"I saw a fiery, confident, like, 'No, I don't hold back, I had a chip on my shoulder, I want to prove to everyone I'm one of the best in the world,'" Nakase said. "To see her offense grow from that point, to even last year in Seattle, it just struck me like wow, this girl really wants to get better."
After a career season with the Seattle Storm in 2025, Williams' scoring average isn't the only stat that is up year-over-year. She's shooting a career-best 37.1% from 3 and is on track to eclipse her career-high 50 3-pointers (2025) with 36 already made with more than half of the season left to play -- and she's doing all of that while still averaging 3.8 rebounds and 1.6 steals.
Always assigned to defend the opponent's best player, Williams has increasingly had the Valkyries' offense run through her.
"Because she is such a good defender, that's all people really talk about," Veronica Burton told ESPN. "She had to take on a role that didn't require her to score as much, and she did that with a lot of grace. So it's been cool to see her now that she has been asked to score more. She has done it so fluidly. ... I always knew she could score so I'm not surprised."
"I'm used to having to cover up for people. But we're all invested here," Williams said, citing the Valkyries' defense-first mindset as a key. "... You can go harder because you're not as exhausted. You have all five people playing with you."
Nakase started to unlock the next phase of Williams' offensive evolution by integrating some of the actions Williams saw with France's Olympic team and with the Storm. A few weeks into the season, Williams asked to do more through ball screens to allow her to get to the rim with more spacing.
But the biggest evolution has been Williams' decision-making, whether that's off the pick-and-roll or the action in front of her.
"Gabby is the most coachable star that I have been around," Nakase said. "She is always looking for accountability. She knows she has evolved into the leader of this group, which is not easy because she is brand-new."
Nakase recalls believing she wasn't getting the best out of Williams early in the season. The second-year head coach was trying to figure out how to best communicate with her newest player -- if she needed to be gentle, or if she could take a more direct approach.
"Just yell at me," Williams recalled telling Nakase.
Williams is frequently trying to figure out how she can do more. After almost every game, win or lose, she texts Nakase asking what she can do better. She is constantly requesting film clips to watch.
Williams' leadership style has evolved, too. Before she figured out how she wanted to use her voice, she observed how other leaders on the team operated. Kayla Thornton likes to lead by example. Tiffany Hayes is constantly speaking up in the locker room. Burton waits until she believes it's necessity to speak.
Williams adopted a style similar to Burton: She carefully selects when she speaks. But her words naturally carry weight as a result.
"When she talks, everyone listens," Burton said. "But whether she talks or not, her impact is always felt as a leader. She has incredible experience, so she is someone we all look toward. She has such composure. She knows when to get into us as a team and also when to just let things play out."
Watching the Valkyries from afar last year, Williams was struck by the level of togetherness the team played with. The Valkyries cycled 16 different starting lineups and overcame stretches without key rotation players due to injury or EuroBasket. Just after the All-Star break, they lost Thornton -- their leading scorer at the time -- to a season-ending knee injury.
"Something I have learned in this league is that teams that make it ... don't implode," Williams said. "What I noticed last year, is no matter what issue would happen, [the Valkyries] figured it out. I would look at them like, 'OK, well, now they have to start losing, now they have to implode.' And they just never did."
Williams had a front-row seat to the Valkyries' team dynamic down the stretch of last season.
She took her grandmother to Chase Center -- 200 miles southwest from their hometown of Reno, Nevada -- for an early September game against the New York Liberty, the day after Williams' then-Storm team was beaten by the Sparks in Los Angeles.
"I remember both of us having a blast and I just felt so lucky that that was the first experience my grandma got to have at a WNBA game," Williams said.
Williams spent chunks of her teenage years in Alameda, right across the Bay Bridge from her new home arena, and played AAU for the local Bay Area Bulldawgs and Mission Rec Rebels. Her brothers played at City College of San Francisco and Cal State, and her sister played at Cal.
As soon as expansion became a discussion for the WNBA, Williams believed the Bay Area needed to have a team. It would be the perfect fit, she thought.
"If you have grown up here or played basketball around here, you just know what it means to the community," Williams said.
It was during her days in the East Bay when Williams developed her tenacity on the defensive end that helped carve out an All-Star career in the WNBA.
"Defense is what got me on the court," Williams said.
Spending time in the Bay Area shaped Williams' music taste. The way she carries herself. Parts of her vernacular.
Joining the Valkyries has put Williams within driving distance from her siblings for the first time since she was a teenager. It has put her in an environment that challenges her in a new way. It has put her where she feels one step closer to a championship ring.
"Is manifestation real?" Williams asked. "Because this is just a pinch me moment."