Ethan Miller/Getty Images
Natalie Nakase has been named head coach of the Golden State Valkyries forward of the staff's inaugural WNBA season.
Nakase beforehand labored in assistant teaching roles for the NBA's Los Angeles Clippers, the NBA G League's Agua Caliente Clippers and the WNBA's Las Vegas Aces.
The Valkyries, the first WNBA expansion franchise since 2008, are set to join the league for the 2025 season.
Nakase, a former UCLA point guard and the first Asian American participant to compete in the National Women's Basketball League, started her teaching profession in Germany and Japan.
After first becoming a member of the Clippers workers in 2012, Nakase was named a participant improvement/assistant coach for the staff below Doc Rivers in 2018.
Following two seasons as an assistant with the Clippers and one working with their developmental affiliate, Nakase joined the WNBA as first assistant coach for Becky Hammon, the place she helped lead the Aces to back-to-back titles in 2022 and 2023.
With the Aces, Nakase was concerned in choices together with “in-game adjustments, substitution rotations, end of game decisions, time out strategies, head coach's challenge usages, clock management and organizing the team on both ends of the court,” in keeping with the Valkyries.
Nakase known as her first WNBA head teaching job “a lifelong dream come true.”
“We are committed to building a winning culture of grit, hard work, and competitiveness,” Nakase stated in a statement. “We will strive to improve, compete, and ultimately bring home a championship for our fans and this organization.”
Nakase doesn't but know what her staff will appear like subsequent season, as the Valkyries might want to wait till Dec. 6 to construct their roster throughout the upcoming expansion draft.
Each of the dozen present WNBA groups will be capable to shield six gamers, after which Golden State will be capable to choose one unprotected participant from every staff.
Golden State can even get the alternative to pick out a participant from the 2025 WNBA draft subsequent April, though their draft place has not but been introduced.
The staff had already introduced the hiring of Ohemaa Nyanin, the common supervisor who will lead the staff by means of the growth and faculty drafts, in May. Nyanin beforehand served as the assistant common supervisor for the New York Liberty.
The Valkyries are the WNBA affiliate of the NBA's Golden State Warriors. The league's thirteenth staff is ready to tip off their inaugural season at the Chase Center in San Francisco subsequent spring.
