Tiffany Hayes was loose. Aboard the team’s ferry from Oakland to San Francisco for their championship parade, she took selfies with her Valkyries teammates and barely left the proximity of the championship trophies.

She, more than anyone, knew what it took to take the title.

Hayes had played the most WNBA games ever without winning a Finals title. Some of those were with the Atlanta Dream, where she went to the Finals in 2013 and they lost to the Minnesota Lynx.

In the 13 years since, Hayes was traded to Connecticut, retired, joined the Aces and won Sixth Player of the Year, then signed with the expansion Valkyries, in that order.

Head coach Natalie Nakase, who was an assistant in Hayes’ lone year in Las Vegas, asked Hayes to “take a leap of faith” and come to the Bay Area together.

That might have been — before anyone knew it — the most important moment in franchise history.