SAN FRANCISCO — In mid-June, Halle Berry had an issue, and that created a conundrum for Gabby Williams. The leading scorer for the Golden State Valkyries worked late on a Monday night. She was set to clock in again the next morning across the bay. But Halle Berry could not be left alone, and addressing this first thing would rob Williams of a couple hours of sleep, which was suboptimal given the demanding nature of her job. So Williams contacted her bosses. She explained her predicament. They offered a quick and easy solution.Bring Halle Berry along. Someone would keep her company.This is an entirely true story, because Halle Berry is, in fact, a 9-year-old rescue cat, and because the lone billion-dollar franchise in the WNBA, an expansion club that tipped off in 2025, understands the means to its ends. A pet with a Hollywood name gets star treatment. Her relieved All-Star owner gets extra rest and then gets back to work. It’s a savvy trade: Paws for effect. “Every little thing, they figure out,” Williams says after a shootaround at the Chase Center a day later. “The only thing you have to worry about is playing basketball.”The Golden State Valkyries, in their second competitive summer, have gotten a lot right in a hurry, and with good timing at that. A historic collective bargaining agreement in April set new WNBA benchmarks for salaries, player experience and much more. Golden State was basically birthed into existence in front of it all. Leveraging advantages ranging from a Sephora-sponsored practice facility to a posh 18,000-seat arena to on-call cat-sitters already has forged an eclectic roster into a championship contender. The Valkyries do what some others still don’t after decades. They are the glitch that is a feature.Now the head start has to withstand everyone else’s obligation to catch up. Pure circumstance may help with that — one operational trick Golden State can’t share with league peers is how to be located in an ideal WNBA market from the jump — but the elevated standards are out there for all to pursue. So a club intentionally given so much must act like nothing is a given.“It’s the only way that I know how to come to work every day,” says Natalie Nakase, who won WNBA Coach of the Year honors after leading the Valkyries to the playoffs in their debut season. “There’s no way we’re gonna have a losing program. There’s no way. I don’t know how to work in that kind of system.”After a cross-country flight following a board meeting, but before he locates a smashburger to solve for dinner cravings, Joe Lacob sits down to discuss past and present. He was the largest investor in the American Basketball League, a professional women’s hoops organization launched in 1996. It shuttered in late 1998. “We did not succeed,” Lacob says with a laugh. Some stuff they got right, he thinks, but mostly he believes the problem was being a little too early.Now it is profitably later. Lacob and his Golden State Warriors co-owner Peter Guber agreed to pay $50 million in 2023 to run the WNBA’s first expansion team in 15 years. Three years later, in its most recent study of the league’s franchise valuations, CNBC appraised the Valkyries at $1 billion. They are the first women’s professional sports franchise to hit that mark. Small wonder that the expansion fees for the next three franchises to enter the league — Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia — landed at $250 million apiece.Golden State ownership isn’t flipping the property anytime soon, if ever. So that $1 billion number is kind of just a number. But … it’s a big number to hit in a relative blink, resetting expectations of what’s achievable in the WNBA marketplace. “Even with the backing of, say, the Warriors in this case, or the NBA in general, it’s still all pretty hard,” Lacob tells The Athletic, wearing a violet Valkyries pullover and a Warriors lanyard with his building ID card attached. “I think we have a great team that has maximized that opportunity. The execution of this startup, if you want to call it, I think is probably one of the best. I’ve started 70 companies in my life. Mostly tech. But this is one of the best.”Inheriting some gems helped.The Sephora Performance Center practice facility, located in downtown Oakland, used to be the home base for their NBA counterpart. It’s crisp and distinct now, with a mural of a Valkyrie warrior in the hallway outside and purple and black everywhere inside, with some Sephora stripes as an accent. (No one has gotten around to changing the massive blue WARRIORS signage on the rooftop, though.) The Chase Center, opened in 2019, is on a 38-game sellout streak for its WNBA tenant. The scene inside the private floor-level Chase Club on a game night has an NBA feel, with crowds lining up to grab a slice at the pizzeria, gourmet popcorn at the movie theater snack station or a Violet’s Fizz specialty cocktail from the bar that retails at $25.50.There is internal pushback on the significance of bling. “The cool stuff doesn’t mean anything,” Valkyries president Jess Smith says. But Golden State also has established a bar network in the region — 35 spots and counting — creating hubs for fans to gather to watch games. A dozen business partners did endorsement deals with players in Year 1, per vice president of corporate partnerships Katie Stockberger. An All-Star Game voting campaign for Valkyries players included QR-code signage at every BART and Caltrain station along the route to Chase Center, and Williams wound up with the seventh-most fan votes overall.