Exactly one year ago, Kiah Stokes jogged onto the court at Chase Center in a Las Vegas Aces jersey. The Aces were the defending champions of the WNBA and they were playing against the league’s first expansion team in years.
Odds were on the Aces.
“I remembered the crowd being so loud,” Stokes said about playing at Ballhalla for the first time. “It was really intense.”
The Valkyries stole the game 95-68 in one of their first major upsets — which turned into a season of upsets. Although the Aces went on to beat the Valkyries in their other three matchups of the season, that game left an impression on Stokes. “It was an incredible atmosphere. I hated being on the other end of it,” Stokes said.
A year later, Stokes is no longer on the other end of it. She is the Valkyries new starting center, coming off a big win against the Indiana Fever and preparing to play against her former team at Chase Center on May 31.
“I still feel like I haven’t caught my breath yet,” said Stokes, at a recent Valkyries practice. She was signed by the Valkyries on April 13, only days before she had to show up to training camp. Since then she’s been practicing nonstop and traveling for games (so far to Seattle, New York and Indianapolis).
I wanted to know how she was feeling leading up to her first home game.
“I’m excited,” Stokes told me as we huddled in the stands at Chase Center. Playing home games at Ballhalla, she said, is one of the reasons she came here. “The fan support was just so great and it was just so positive. It’s like every game they’re selling out 18,000 people. I mean that’s incredible.”
Her former teammates had been understanding of her decision, she added. “It’s no bad blood between me and them. There are still a lot of really good people there. It’s still people I consider my family.”
I considered asking whether she has an insider strategy to shut down her former teammate (and the league’s defending MVP), A’ja Wilson, but honestly, Wilson is unstoppable. What I really wanted to know is what it has been like for Stokes to pick up and leave her home, her teammates and her community to come to the Bay.
The transition has been helped, Stokes said, by the fact that she played for Valks’ head coach Natalie Nakase in Vegas and played with assistant coach Sugar Rogers on the New York Liberty. “I have a history with Coach Natalie so she sees me kind of like in my head and she’ll pull me aside. Same thing with Sugar. We were teammates in the past so, you know, she had to kind of get into me a few games ago and say ‘Come on, I know what you can do.’”
And what can Stokes do? For starters, she posted 11 rebounds against the Chicago Sky earlier this month. She can definitely win championships – she’s done that at UConn, in the Euroleague and the WNBA. “She understands what we are building here and what it takes to win,” Valkyries General Manager, Ohemaa Nyanin, said when the team signed Stokes.
On the court, Stokes and the team have gelled quickly. “If you’ve seen the movie Drumline, it’s like ‘one band, one sound’,” Stokes explained, referencing the iconic speech about teamwork in the 2002 movie. “That’s exactly what it’s like.” That was especially clear on Monday night when nearly every player on the team — from the starters to the bench — scored in the 97-70 win against the Connecticut Sun.
Off the court, Stokes hasn’t had much time to process the move. She misses her house and her routines. “I’m a creature of habit,” she told me. “I miss, like, driving to a grocery store and using a parking lot,” she said with a laugh.
Full disclosure, I’m new to reporting on professional sports and there are rules of engagement here that I am still trying very hard to pick up on – so when Stokes told me she hasn’t had time to explore, misses parking lots and has been asking everyone where to go in the Bay, I wasn’t sure if I could — human-to-human — offer her some recommendations. I have, after all, lived here since 2012, and still remember what it was like to not know how good the poke is at Hook Fish or how epic the view is atop Corona Heights Park. I have since come to know a parking lot, or two.
Or, was I supposed to just press on with the basketball questions?
To be safe, I went with the latter. I asked about her strategy for sinking free throws – three dribbles, a big exhale and a hope for the best mentality, she told me.
But when our conversation was over and I sat down to write, I wondered whether I should just make this whole story a guide to the Bay — for Stokes and for every reader who wants some guidance on the best beach or sushi spot in the city.
Then we talked again and Stokes told me that her family was visiting. Her mom is a real planner. “I’m gonna let her take over so she will probably show me around,” Stokes said with a laugh, saving me, and all of you, from my impulse to play tour guide.
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