Tiffany Hayes did not start and it did not matter one bit. The veteran guard came off the Golden State bench Wednesday for a season-best 22 points, six rebounds and five assists, and the Valkyries flipped a slow start into a 91-71 handling of the Chicago Sky.
Twenty points is not a coin-flip result. That is a team deciding, sometime after the opening stretch went badly, that it was going to be the more organized group for the rest of the night. Veronica Burton added 13 points and six rebounds and kept the thing pointed in the right direction, which has become her job description more than her stat line ever shows.
What I love about the Hayes line is the shape of it. Twenty-two, six and five is not a heat-check scorer getting hot. That is a guard doing three different jobs in the same night, arriving with the second unit and immediately being the most experienced player on the floor. She has been in this league a long time, most of it as a starter, and she has taken to the sixth-woman role in Golden State like a woman who figured out the minutes matter more than the introduction.
checked the almanac: this franchise made the postseason in its very first season, which is not how expansion is supposed to go in any league, ever. that context is why a 20-point win over a team fighting for footing reads as maintenance instead of a miracle.
For Chicago, 71 points is the story and it is not a new one. When the shots do not come easy, the Sky do not have an obvious second answer, and Wednesday they never found one. That is a problem you fix with sets and spacing over weeks, not with one bounce-back night.
What I am watching next is whether Golden State keeps Hayes in that bench role now that it produced a season high, or whether the temptation to start her wins out. Some players are better as the first punch. Some are better as the second. Her coaches sound like they already know which one they have.
