SAN FRANCISCO — “Let’s get some music going,” Natalie Nakase yelled as the Golden State Valkyries started a scrimmage at a September practice. They were gearing up for the playoffs, and the coach wanted her players to get acclimated to loud and hostile environments.
But instead of one of the usual songs on Nakase’s playlist — Adele, Rihanna or Taylor Swift — something far more jarring blasted from the speakers at their training facility.
“All of a sudden, it’s the noise of machine guns and bombs,” center Kiah Stokes told ESPN. “I’m like, ‘This is not happening. She’s literally playing war music.’ That was new.”
Even for a coach who sometimes texts her staff at 4 a.m. and is thinking about the next game as she goes through the handshake line, playing the sounds of battle in a practice facility was intense.
Nakase got the idea after observing coach Joe Mazzulla do it with his Boston Celtics at their NBA training camp earlier that month. She thought it was “genius,” and Stokes admits it forced her to speak louder and communicate better, which was part of Nakase’s goal.
Her other objective was to get them into a particular mindset.
“We’re here to win or die,” Nakase told ESPN.
It’s an example of the extremes Nakase is willing to go for this franchise — and a mentality that has helped put the Valkyries on the cusp of history in their second season.
Just 18 months ago, Golden State was the WNBA’s newest expansion franchise made up of players left unprotected and deemed expendable by their previous teams. There was no superstar, and there were no real external expectations.
Now, Golden State has a 1-0 lead in the WNBA Finals heading into Monday’s Game 2 (8 p.m. ET) at Chase Center. This season, the Valkyries had the top-ranked defense, the league’s best bench production and a commanding home-court advantage — all of which helped drive them to a gritty 68-64 victory over the Atlanta Dream on Saturday.
Their play reflects Nakase’s personality traits: Hypercompetitive. Detail oriented. Defense first.
“It comes from me because that’s who I am and you cannot fake who you are,” Nakase said. “It’s how I played, and now it’s what I coach.”
Nakase’s assistants describe her as “fiery.” Las Vegas coach Becky Hammon, who had Nakase on her staff for the Aces’ first two WNBA titles, calls her “mighty mouse.”
The biggest factor in the WNBA Finals might be the 5-foot-2 coach who has gotten complete buy-in from her team.
“A basketball sicko, that sounds about right,” Valkyries guard Tiffany Hayes told ESPN. “She is the head of our snake.”
NAKASE OBSESSES OVER marginal details, a passion she chalks up to her curiosity. She picks apart film for hours, zooming in on specific players, rewinding plays over and over again. She is always looking for ways to get the best out of her players. It keeps her mind churning 24/7, thinking over her game plan and texting her staff constantly.
“I’m good at seeing a ton of things at once, and because of that I suck in information,” Nakase told ESPN. “I love to digest and dissect and then give that information back.”
These are the attributes that got Nakase to this level. She worked her way up the ranks of NBA coaching staffs, starting as a video coordinator with the Los Angeles Clippers in 2012 before eventually becoming a full-time assistant coach for Doc Rivers and Tyronn Lue. She joined Hammon’s staff ahead of the 2022 season and was part of the Aces’ back-to-back championships in 2022 and 2023.
But Nakase always wanted to be a head coach. When she interviewed with Golden State owner Joe Lacob for the Valkyries job in 2024, it was an opportunity to lead her own team and bring the vision she had for an organization to life. And working for Lacob — who famously said the Valkyries would win a title within the first five years of the franchise’s launch — and alongside general manager Ohemaa Nyanin and president Jess Smith only drove Nakase harder.
“When I saw who was in charge here, I was like, ‘Wow, this is going to be an elite group, I’ve got to bring it,’ because I did feel like I was the least experienced out of [the leadership],” Nakase said. “How do I level up to be like them?
“So it was me constantly needing to learn. How can I be better? How can I be a better leader? How can I get smarter IQ or strategy within the game?”
Nakase is used to feeling like she has to up her game. Her late father, Gary, always wanted to make sure Nakase was challenged on the court. Seeing flashes of her potential, he coached her differently than her siblings. Once she established herself as a top player, he would move her to a different team, forcing her to once again challenge herself and climb the ranks.
Gary didn’t give much verbal affirmation to his daughter, Nakase said. No feedback was good feedback — it meant she didn’t do anything wrong. Every once in a while, Nakase would get a nod from her father, which was the ultimate sign of approval. It was tough love.
“Basketball is our love language,” Nakase said.
Nakase sees similarities in how her dad taught her to how she coaches the Valkyries.
“I have to say something positive, and I’m like, yuck,” she said, chuckling. “But it’s what they need, and that’s why I’m more flexible in this position.”
“She’s not only learned how to be a head coach, but she continues to get better as a head coach every single day. She learned her players,” Hayes said. “She learns us. She lets us be us. She lets us play to our strengths. It’s something that a lot of other coaches are missing.”
Nakase’s devotion to basketball makes it easy for her team to follow her.
“It starts with her work ethic and her passion,” Valkyries assistant coach Kasib Powell said. “The way the team plays embodies how she is, what she brings to the table. We go off of her. She sets the tone for us on exactly our expectations, how she wants things; it’s easy to follow after that.”
FIVE DAYS BEFORE the first game of the Finals, “Shake It Off” by Taylor Swift blasted through Nakase’s stereo as she was getting ready to head to the Sephora Performance Center in Oakland for another day of practice and prep.
Every morning, Nakase puts her playlist on shuffle as soon as she wakes up. She doesn’t need to hit snooze on her alarm for 10 more minutes of sleep, or grab a cup of coffee to get activated. She wakes up dancing, she said.
This Swift anthem about ignoring criticism and not letting others’ thoughts have a negative impact on you seems awfully similar to what the Valkyries have done in two years: prove people wrong.
“We’re special,” Golden State forward Kayla Thornton said. “We play for each other. Everybody thinks we’re the underdogs. But we don’t think about the outside.”
But the song holds deeper roots for Nakase. In 2014, when she transitioned from the video staff to a coach with the Clippers, it was the song that came on shuffle when she was driving to the first practice in which she had to run a drill.
“I had to find my voice, so I practiced it by singing in the car,” Nakase said.
She has pushed the Valkyries to find their voices, as well. She is proud that Burton has started to curse — something Nakase does constantly. She loves that Gabby Williams does math equations in her head to calculate how many possessions they have left in a tight game. She can now hear Stokes when she uses her new “outside” voice that cuts through noise.
And that’s perhaps Nakase’s biggest strength: finding the best way in her basketball-obsessed brain to tailor her coaching style to her players yet never lose herself in the process.
“When you have someone at the top that puts in the work [and] genuinely believes in what she is saying — she came in and she set the standard for us,” Burton said. “She genuinely believed all of this is something we could accomplish. It’s easy to get on board with that. … She wasn’t going to let anyone put limitations on her.”
