The Golden State Valkyries are in the WNBA Finals in only their second season, and the path back to October 2024 runs through Natalie Nakase. That was when the team introduced her as its first head coach, with Ohemaa Nyanin sitting beside her as the franchise was still a blank page.
The search around Nakase now is simple: how did a team built from scratch get here so fast? The answer starts with the way Golden State chose to build. Joe Lacob said the ownership group would put women at the forefront of leadership, and Jess Smith, Nyanin and Nakase became the people asked to turn that promise into a roster, a culture and a team that could actually win.
Smith joined the organization in February 2024 and was employee No. 1. Nyanin was No. 2. Smith said the roster and culture existed because of Nyanin, whose attention to detail shaped every layer of the operation. She said there was no old playbook to lean on, no way of saying this is how it has always been done. Instead, the three women came in with a knowledge base, a network and a shared question: how do we do this differently?
That made Nakase a compelling first coach choice for a franchise that needed more than a sideline voice. She was introduced into a leadership group that barely knew one another and knew even less about what the season would become. Even so, Nakase told Nyanin, “She’s not going to let me fail,” a line that captured both the trust and the uncertainty in the room.
The results have been hard to ignore. This month, Golden State beat the defending champion Las Vegas Aces 87-77 in overtime on the road, completed a sweep against Las Vegas and earned a trip to the WNBA Finals. That is the payoff for a women-led expansion project that started with little more than an ownership promise and a roster that did not exist yet.
Joe Lacob said he wanted another Bay Area team for 30 years, ever since the San Jose Lasers folded in 1998, and he called it important to put women in positions of authority. The unanswered question now is not whether the model worked. It is how much farther Natalie Nakase and the Valkyries can take it after turning a blank page into a Finals team in two years.
