The Golden State Valkyries announced ahead of their inaugural 2025 season Thursday that they’ve hired the first Asian American head coach in the league, Natalie Nakase.

“Being named the head coach of the Golden State Valkyries is a lifelong dream come true,” Nakase said in a statement. “I am thankful to Joe Lacob, Ohemaa Nyanin and the Golden State front office for entrusting me with this responsibility. We are committed to building a winning culture of grit, hard work, and competitiveness. We will strive to improve, compete, and ultimately bring home a championship for our fans and this organization.”

Prior to this historic role, Nakase held assistant coaching positions for the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers, the NBA G League’s Agua Caliente Clippers, and, most recently, the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces.

Nakase, under head coach Becky Hammon at the Las Vegas Aces, was part of the team that secured back-to-back WNBA titles in 2022 and 2023. During that period, Nakase assisted 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,” according to the Valkyries. Now, she leads one of three new franchises in this upcoming WNBA season. 

“Natalie is the perfect candidate to lead the Valkyries as our head coach,” said Golden State General Manager Ohemaa Nyanin. “She exemplifies every character trait in what we were looking for in a head coach and possesses deep expertise across professional basketball. Her journey is representative of the grit and perseverance that our team will embody to achieve our ultimate goal of winning championships.”

The former UCLA point guard rings in 16 years of coaching professional basketball to the new franchise. Beginning her career in 2008 in Germany, she served as head coach for the Wolfenbuttel Wildcats for two seasons before transitioning over to assistant coach of the Tokyo Apache for one season. While in Japan, she transferred over to the Saitama Broncos, making her the first woman to serve as head coach in the league. She then returned stateside to work under the LA Clippers. 

Nakase’s roster is still in its early stages as the Valkyries need to wait until the Dec. 6 expansion draft to begin. Each of the dozen pre-existing WNBA teams can protect six players, after which the new franchises will be able to select an unprotected player from each team. Golden State will have the opportunity to select a player at April’s 2025 WNBA draft before the start of the franchise’s first season. 

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