How Natalie Nakase and the Valkyries redefined WNBA expansion by being 'joyfully relentless'

USA Today

10 hours ago

After 16 years in pro basketball, Natalie Nakese faced her hardest assignment yet. Her first WNBA head coaching job was to lead the Golden State Valkyries, the league's newest expansion team with ambitious goals, having to build chemistry from scratch and unite a group of castoffs without a recent expansion blueprint to follow.
Along with the natural pressures of a brand-new team, the Valkyries were debuting against a backdrop of a growing spotlight on the league, serving as the first step toward unprecedented expansion with six new franchises by 2030. Nakase's resume — which included 10 seasons with the Los Angeles Clippers and three years as an assistant coach with the Las Vegas Aces — would help, but few coaches experience the strenuous challenges of coaching a debuting team. The Valkyries gave Nakese the keys but "nothing" else, the new WNBA head coach chuckled.
With a blank canvas, she needed to work with team president Jess Smith, the franchise's first employee, and general manager Ohemaa Nyanin, who came from New York's front office, to deploy a strategy that could meet the team's lofty dream of winning a championship in the first five seasons. Surpassing the WNBA expansion team record for victories during a debut year was just one of many steps.
Everyone had to trust that Nakase's vision and philosophy would work. Presumably, at some point, the unspoken pressure to produce would eventually bubble up. But that's not a notion she subscribes to.'Pressure is just a word people like to say, but you can't actually see pressure. It's just a made-up word that people [use] to, I think, get into your mind," Nakase told For The Win.
She welcomed the freedom and flexibility, but it was a double-edged sword. Nearly every coaching staff she'd previously been part of had a well-established franchise behind it. She'd have to cultivate a team identity among mostly unprotected expansion draft selections and then deliver success in a win-now league.
She landed on a simple formula: Process over results, betting one would lead to the other. She hoped the roster of perceived castaways could write their own story rooted in their varying past successes and failures.
The 45-year-old's intentions sounded easy to grasp, but implementing them was an entirely different matter. Most players who joined the team wouldn't be familiar with Nakase as a coach, and several wouldn't have the benefit of previously playing together either.
'A concept that I'm going to constantly remind our players is that we want to get 1 percent better every single day. As simple as that sounds, I'm going to go back to simplicity,' Nakase explained. 'We want to control what we can control, and that's our effort. That's our attention to detail. That's learning our concepts.'
Nakase's fearlessness oozed into the Valkyries' young roster
Despite Nakese's confidence, the history of immediate expansion team success wasn't on her side. Seven WNBA franchises in league history have dipped below a 15 percent win percentage during a single season, and three of them were organizations in their debut season, per ESPN. The league's newest expansion team before the Valkyries, the Atlanta Dream, went 4-30 in their first WNBA season in 2008.
Starting with the expansion draft, the Valkyries needed to balance selecting the strongest players with the need for ones who potentially would work well together in the hope of avoiding pitfalls of new teams. Nakase and her staff selected former Aces guard Kate Martin, whom she coached in Vegas, and New York Liberty forward Kayla Thornton, who won a championship with the New York Liberty last season. As more selections rolled in, with names like Indiana Fever center Temi Fagbenle and Phoenix Mercury forward Monique Billings, an early perception about Golden State began to form.
The Valkyries built a talented roster, but they didn't have a true standout star or a definitive leader to build around. None of that seemed to affect Nakase or her roster.
'We're a bunch of underrated players, players who had to play the sixth-woman role. We're relentless,' forward Monique Billings said. 'We've had to play multiple roles on different teams. We've been counted out. Underdogs.'
Three weeks into the 2025 WNBA season, the first signature victory of the Nakase era was in the books. In a 95-68 dismantling of her former Aces team in June, the Valkyries unleashed a sweltering defense that felt eerily reminiscent of the scheme that earned Vegas back-to-back championships. Defenders super-glued themselves to the Aces' hips, leaving no room to operate. With unspoken synchronization and arms extended wide and rapidly moving (similar to peacocks warning of impending danger), the Valkyries dared Las Vegas to shoot.
Their punishing offensive style also showed flashes of Aces coach Becky Hammon's scheme. It leaned into a stupefying pace that exploited Las Vegas' slow defensive response time. If there was a sliver of hesitation from Hammon's squad, Nakase's Golden State team hammered the perimeter with back-breaking 3-pointers and zipped through the paint with breathtaking speed, creating shot after shot en route to a Nakase masterclass.
'From day one, she said she wanted killers on the team,' Billings said.
The players were proud in the locker room after their first key victory, guard Kate Martin told For The Win about the Aces win. They had been focusing on learning from mistakes, having a defensive mentality and playing team basketball — exactly what Nakase had been preaching.
'We knew that going into it, there hadn't been Valkyries basketball before,' Martin said. 'There hasn't been a culture set, so we get to set that tone of what Valkyries basketball is. We just knew that we wanted to give it our all since it's new, and we want to give our all in every single thing we do.'
'[Nakase is] a great leader. She demands a lot from us, but she leads with tough love, and I love that,' Fagbenle added.
Perhaps most impressive wasn't just the way they were playing — tough, gritty, hard-nosed basketball — it was who they were beating. Among its victories after cruising past the Aces, Golden State took down superstar Caitlin Clark's Indiana Fever and one of the most experienced teams in the WNBA, the veteran-heavy Seattle Storm, twice in June — when Nakase was named Coach of the Month.
Surprising Coach Natalie with her @WNBA June Coach of the Month award is the ideal way to start a Thursday morning 💜@JWinery | Celebrating Milestones pic.twitter.com/8c0m5RZWMV
As the middle of the season neared, Golden State surpassed early expectations. The preseason predictions for Nakase's roster ranged in value, but many outlets and pundits settled around roughly nine wins. The Valkyries had 10 by the All-Star break in July and sent Thornton to Indianapolis as the first All-Star in franchise history.
Golden State's early success was a good omen for its chances to finish the season above .500. Since the WNBA's debut in 1996, only one expansion franchise, the Detroit Shock, ended its debut with a winning record, per The Athletic. (In 1998, Detroit finished the regular season with a 17-13 record.) The Valkyries surpassed the Shock on August 15 with their 18th win, setting a new WNBA record for most wins by an expansion team in a debut season.
Additionally, Golden State could also become the first expansion franchise in WNBA history to make the playoffs during its inaugural year. The team currently sits seventh in the standings with an 18-17 record.
From the outside looking in, it felt easy to attribute part of their success to the magic of 'Ballhalla', the team's nickname for its home arena, the Chase Center. Selling out every home game with more than 18,000 screaming fans in attendance is enough to make most athletes want to run through a wall. Still, something about Golden State felt different.
'Unprecedented,' Fagbenle said, trying to encapsulate the Valkyries' first year. 'You wouldn't have been able to predict how things have happened.'
'There's no egos. There's no trying to prove or anything like that,' Thornton added. 'We just wanna play.'
A lack of egos contributed to quick chemistry building, as the Valkyries players discovered their strengths and weaknesses on the court — and in the locker room. They build each other back up after losses, joke about dancing in the pregame huddles and have loose rules about trying to keep Martin and Carla Leite away from the aux cord.
'Everybody gets their chance,' veteran guard Tiffany Hayes said. 'That's the kind of locker room we got.'
Whether people get a second shot at the aux cord is up for debate.
'I would definitely invite Temi [Fagbenle] back on the aux,' Hayes said. 'Temi got the hits. … She plays Afrobeats. I love Afrobeats.'
After 13 years in the league, Hayes explained how growing with her teammates as they navigated their roles on the league's novel squad empowered her to be a more vocal veteran leader in her new home.
'Everybody's so easy to talk to — good listeners. You don't have that on every team,' she said. 'So, I'm blessed to be able to start that journey here with doing that because I've tried it before, and it kinda took me back in a shell because it wasn't received well. But being here, I kinda got out of that shell a little bit.'
However, Hayes, Thornton and Fagbenle stopped just short of revealing the team's secret formula for triumph, subtly opting to keep some items in-house. But having a solid group in the locker room 'really goes a long way,' Hayes said.
'We're bought into what we wanna do, that we're playing for each other,' Thornton said. 'When we go out there, we play with joy. We don't try to think about other things. We live the moment.'
The Valkyries laid the foundation for 'the future state' of the WNBA
Golden State's front office also seemed to buy into the foundation of the Valkyries' culture being built on joy. Team President Jess Smith emphasized that the more success the franchise had since launching, the harder it was to stay satisfied with what they've accomplished. The goalposts kept moving.
Smith described their joint effort to continually think big with Nakase and the players with a distinct two-word phrase: 'Joyfully relentless.'
'We are having so much fun, but there is no give,' Smith said. 'There is no 'Alright, we did it.' We're like, 'We want more.' It's insatiable at all times. … We've kind of compiled this group of people who love to win.'
May 14, 2024 — the Golden State Valkyries launched in New York City ✨🪽🗡️💜 Full feature: https://youtu.be/n9EeaGxqHoA?si=5zYL7itLD-1TyqjH
The Valkyries fully admit that they prioritized bringing people on board who like focusing on achieving goals and being aligned on a simple mission: If they are successful, it means the WNBA benefits and so do future expansion franchises. Their victories and growth sow the seeds for other investment opportunities.
'It's about doing the right thing and doing it for something bigger than ourselves and the future state of this league and women's sports that drives us every single day,' Smith said.
The front offices around the league — including the Portland Fire and Toronto Tempo, new franchises debuting in 2026 — have noted Golden State's early success. The resounding takeaway was not only that other teams respect what the Valkyries have done in such a short amount of time, but also the way they operate is something several franchises admire.
Fire interim president Clare Hamill, who joined the franchise in late June, said she was grateful Smith reached out to help answer any questions, as Portland prepares for its debut. And she couldn't help but gush about how the Valkyries have leaned into serving their early supporters.
"They've crushed it,' Hamill said. 'They have done a fantastic job. They've done it because they've focused on the fans and the fan experience and the audiences that they serve.'
Similarly, Tempo general manager Monica Wright Rogers praised Golden State's general manager for her approach to roster construction. From Wright Rogers' perspective, it was evident that Nyanin's time with the Liberty helped shape part of her talent philosophy, particularly scouting international talent and overall impact players.
'Oh, man. I've been very impressed with them from both the business and a basketball side. … I think they're just really setting the bar high for all expansion teams, which is great if you're a competitor.' Wright Rogers said.
'I think what they've done is lean into some of the second-tier players that really have been great role players on WNBA rosters, and obviously, something that has proven to be successful for them. I'm, obviously, not going to give away all the secrets, but definitely taking notes of that.'
Atlanta Dream general manager Dan Padover, a 15-year WNBA veteran, also seemed to echo Wright Rogers' sentiments. The Dream, a 2008 expansion franchise, are well past the years of assimilation, but they are paying attention to what's happening in San Francisco.
'They really built the blueprint for — if you're gonna have an expansion franchise in this league — how to do it. I think it's gonna be very hard to copy.' Padover said. 'Kudos to them. I think it's been a great thing for the league. Great thing for that market. And I think we've all been very impressed with what they've pulled off thus far.'