HUNTINGTON BEACH — Natalie Nakase beat the sunrise.
It’s not because she couldn’t sleep. It’s not because she didn’t have time to rest on this March morning. After all, the start of the WNBA season was two months away. And, yet, Nakase was tormenting herself – waking up at 5 a.m. one morning, and going to bed after midnight the next evening.
“I’m training myself,” she says, “to sustain positive energy and mental focus through exhaustion.”
This was her way, she explains, of preparing for the inconsistency of the WNBA schedule. Nobody asked her to do this. None of the esteemed coaches – Doc Rivers, Tyronn Lue, Becky Hammon – who mentored her taught her this strategy. No, she’s just crazy, she says.
Crazy about winning.
“It’s the only important thing in my life,” she says. “I’m laser focused. I’m a hard worker. I’m obsessive.”
And right now, to achieve winning, she has to embody those traits.
Nakase faces a rare challenge. She’s a first-time head coach leading a brand-new franchise: the WNBA’s latest expansion team, the Golden State Valkyries. There’s no foundation, no culture. She’s tasked with establishing both. She’s responsible for uniting players who’ve never played together and building a franchise from the ground up.
This is her dream job. Yet, she feels no pressure, she says. That’s why she was hired.
When Nakase was being considered for the Valkyries’ position, she was interviewed by team owner Joe Lacob, a billionaire executive who has also owned the Golden State Warriors since 2010. Soon into their conversation, Nakase noticed she gained comfort hearing how hard Lacob worked for his success.
“You remind me of my dad,” she told him.
‘Lift your head’
The late Gary Nakase was quiet but intelligent, his daughters’ friends and loved ones described. Standing 5-foot-5 with long, graying facial hair, he picked his spots, but when he spoke, you listened.
That was only one side of Nakase’s experience.
“Just tough,” she said, “strict, brutally honest. But, he always wanted the best for me.”
When Nakase was 10 years old, she had a bad game and overheard parents chastising her mistakes. She grew frustrated, put her head down and began to cry. Her dad walked over to her, his overgrown mustache and flip flops standing out in a gym of fades and Jordans.
“Lift your head,” Nakase recalled him saying.
“Don’t ever give a (expletive) about what people think,” he continued. “Always believe in yourself, Natalie. Always.”
“That gave me a completely different mindset,” Nakase said, reflecting on the impressionable moment. “I was like, ‘OK, great, I don’t have to care what people think.’”
Throughout her childhood, Nakase’s father intentionally placed her in “high-adversity” situations.
When she rose to be the top girl on her childhood team, he made her play against boys. When she made history as the first freshman on the girls’ varsity squad at Marina High in Huntington Beach, he forced her to play against women in the offseason. Whenever she became the best, he wanted her to remember what it felt like to be the worst, and have to work for everything all over again.
Because of this, she grew wary of receiving opportunities for free, even if they were deserved. She turned down a basketball scholarship from UC Irvine, instead deciding to walk on at UCLA.
‘A floor general’
In the fall of 1998, all 5-foot-2 of her strutted into Kathy Olivier’s office and told the then-UCLA women’s basketball coach that she could hang with the Bruins’ scholarship players and earn her own if she tried out.
There weren’t formal tryouts, so it helped that Olivier had scouted Nakase at Marina, where she had led the Vikings to a CIF championship as a senior.
“She was a very good leader,” Olivier said. “A floor general. Those types of players are usually very good coaches.”
The same determination that Nakase carried into Olivier’s office, she held throughout her career, never avoiding the grind needed to achieve any goal.
She tore her ACL before her freshman season at UCLA, but still earned a scholarship because she was a sponge, Olivier said. By her senior year, she became team captain. She held teammates accountable in a way they respected, slipping them uplifting comments during games, and encouraging them to meet her for early morning workouts.
Her former college teammate, Michelle Greco, who has remained close with Nakase, described her as having the “Steph Curry effect.”
“You see yourself more in Natalie because she’s just that everyday girl,” the former Bruins and Crescenta Valley High star said. “She worked her tail off to get to where she’s at, and it wasn’t because of her natural physical abilities. I think it says a lot for kids growing up and they see someone like Natalie: You know that if you sacrifice and you’re disciplined, and you work hard enough, why can’t I do it too?”
‘She was just good’
Asian-American women are a distinct minority in NBA circles, but the lack of examples didn’t dissuade Nakase. Channeling her father’s message to not care about others’ paths, she paved her own.
After starting her career overseas, she earned a position in player development for the Clippers, who were then coached by Rivers. She immediately commanded the respect of players a foot or two taller than her. She worked to understand Rivers’ system because she felt being well-prepared allowed her to coach with confidence.
“When I hired Natalie,” Rivers said. “I didn’t look at her like she was small, I didn’t look at her like male, female or any of that stuff, she was just good.”
Nakase spent 10 seasons with the Clippers, maintaining her role under their next head coach, Tyronn Lue. Her goal was to become an NBA head coach. But in 2021, when her father passed away, she couldn’t avoid seeing reminders of him throughout Southern California.
She felt a new area and challenge were necessary.
Lue suggested contacting Becky Hammon, the head coach of the Las Vegas Aces who had also cut her teeth as an assistant in the NBA with San Antonio’s Gregg Popovich. At first Nakase was hesitant, but when they spoke, Hammon’s first question was, “How are you doing as a person?”
“I knew right then and there I needed to work with her,” Nakase said of joining Hammon’s Aces staff. “I needed to learn from her. I needed to be under her care.”
In Nakase’s first season with the Aces in 2022, the team overcame a low preseason projection to win the WNBA championship. Their collective perseverance made that season Nakase’s favorite of her career. The Aces went back-to-back, winning it again the following year.
At that point, Nakase had earned the reputation as a championship-caliber assistant and, with the popularity around women’s basketball heightening, she saw a route to a new goal as a WNBA head coach.
To earn that position, it didn’t hurt to have the support of Rivers, Lue and Hammon. And now that she’s reached her goal, Nakase says, she’s applying lessons from each of them.
From Lue, she took the importance of communication. From Hammon, she has the power of empathy. From Rivers, she learned the first step to starting any franchise is building a culture.
Rivers, though, told her she can’t just mimic her mentors.
“Just be true to yourself,” he told her. “That’s all that matters.’”
So, during the WNBA’s expansion draft, Nakase sought relentless workers with a high IQ. And, when it came to her personal image of the Valkyries’ culture, Nakase says, her players are her culture.
In the months leading up to training camp and the WNBA season, she harped on connectivity, understanding what made her players tick. She connected with them through Zooms and phone calls, as many were playing overseas or in the Unrivaled league.
Nakase and the Valkyries’ owner, Lacob, are aligned. Bonded by the intense determination that reminded Nakase of her father, they share lofty expectations. They’re striving for a playoff appearance in the first season, and to contend for a title within five years.
“This is a brand new team,” Nakase said. “So we have to be clear and concise with our teaching. We’re not wasting the players’ time.”
‘I failed as much as I could’
Back in Huntington Beach, Nakase’s presence is undeniable. While she doesn’t have as much time to return and share her mantra of diligence and self-confidence, her story is revered.
“So many kids can relate to her,” said Danny Roussel, the girls’ varsity coach at Marina High. “Probably half of our girls are little Asian girls that look like her. They see themselves in her. So that’s really cool that they can look up to somebody from Huntington Beach that looks like them.”
Marina recently started retiring the jerseys of former boys’ basketball players as a way to honor its history. Roussel felt he needed to do the same for the girls’ team. Nakase was the clear inaugural choice.
So, about 18 months ago, the Vikings’ gym welcomed Nakase, her family, her former Marina teammates and coach, her former UCLA teammates, a handful of Aces players she coached, people from Orange County’s Southeast Asian basketball community, and a Zoom appearance from Doc Rivers. A world of individuals whom Nakase has touched, grouped into one room to do the thing she hates the most: Celebrate her achievements.
She inspired them with her journey, and on that afternoon, she allowed herself to relish in it, pausing her constant drive for a moment of satisfaction.
“I never felt like I was gonna be that impressionable or inspirational,” Nakase says. “I literally just follow my passion and what I stand for. The reason why I’m here is, I took big risks and I failed as much as I could.”
She constantly encourages young girls to do the same – make mistakes, experience and enjoy struggles, follow aspirations regardless of outside opinions, and work hard for whatever the dream is.
“If I can put that imprint on the next generation, then I feel like there is going to be a next Natalie Nakase,” she says.