SAN FRANCISCO — It was a relief to see Valkyries coach Natalie Nakase in the press room in Chicago in late August.
I’d spent the season uncomfortable with the fact that as a Sky beat reporter, I still couldn’t tell how good Tyler Marsh, the Sky’s first-time coach who struggled through his first two seasons, really was.
Now here was a coach everyone agreed was great. Nakase had undeniably turned her team into something greater than the sum of its parts, ultimately leading them to the Finals in only the franchise’s second year of existence.
How did she do it? From afar, Nakase gives the impression she’s outworking everyone. Maybe because of the urgency with which she stalks the sidelines, or how frequently she says the word “kill.”
But up close she conveys a certain warmth too. She’s the kind of person whose eyes light up when she sees a familiar member of the press, or when asked about a bench player’s success, or when talking about her team’s commitment to playing with joy.
I remember before the game in Chicago, the broadcaster asked her about that joy — in particular, about how it showed up on the stat sheet. Was it valuable only insofar as it led to winning, or some other measurable outcome? Nakase said no.
“There has to be some beauty in understanding that: you’re gonna lose,” she said. “You can still have joy when you’re losing. Sports has to understand that’s gonna happen.”
It felt like the soft underbelly of Nakase’s relentless aura peeking out. So I decided to find out more about the connection between the two.
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Interviewing players and coaches around the league this past week reveals that Nakase really is tough as nails. She’s obsessive about giving it her all and getting her team to “empty the tank.” That she collapsed from exhaustion during Game 3 of the quarterfinals against the Wings was the most striking and concerning example.
She said later that she’d been so excited about game planning that she’d forgotten to eat.
As Nakase tells it, she got her work ethic from her Dad. Gary Nakase was the person who held her to the highest standard, who always put her in basketball leagues where she was the worst player so that she’d have to sink or swim.
“He’s like: ‘hey now you suck, good luck,’” she laughed.
But I did a little reading and found out it goes back further than that. Gary got his work ethic from his father, Kenichi, who was relocated to a Japanese internment camp during World War II, and then had to start all over.
It got me thinking about how we inherit our approaches to hard work. My grandparents, Latvian refugees from the Soviet occupation, also had to start from scratch when they came to the United States. They instilled a strong work ethic in my mom, who passed it on to me.
Over time though, I became more skeptical of the Boomers and their “just push through” attitudes toward hard work. I felt they weren’t in touch enough with their hearts or bodies to discern whether they were even working toward the right thing. I was even skeptical of my peers and the hustle culture I saw all around me — didn’t hustling so hard just release us from reckoning with our greed and cravings for prestige?
But what about when the hustlers are really trying to help people? What about someone like Nakase, who’s working toward a more noble goal?
“Coaching is never about you,” Nakase said, when asked about her purpose last week. “It should never be about you. It’s all about pouring yourself into others and building their confidence.
“And building their weaknesses into strengths and making them also understand that: it’s okay to have weaknesses.”
I had to learn that lesson about weaknesses the hard way this season. Six months after Nakase got her dream job with the Valkyries, I got mine covering the WNBA. That meant that for the first time in my career, I’d be contributing to a greater purpose: deepening the conversation around women’s basketball, a game I had played and coached my entire life.
Suddenly I was grinding in the ways I’d always criticized. I discovered how easy it was to fall into it. You forget to eat because the 10-hour sessions don’t even feel like work. Because you’re in flow. Because in some ways the work puts you at ease. “Film is my therapy,” Nakase said after practice last Friday.
But as anyone who’s ever been in therapy knows: it’s actually tiring as hell. It takes a toll on your body. Eventually you run into the thing that tells you you need to stop.
For me, it was muscle tension that started causing sharp pains in the back of my head. Or more accurately: it was concern from parents about the pains in the back of my head that pushed me to slow down.
I realized that to make it through the season, I had to start taking more breaks. Which, ironically, is something that my mom has encouraged me to do my whole life. I’d ignored it because I feared it wou
ld be a weakness — that it cause me to fall behind.
But I discovered that not only does pausing to take a break actually improve the quality of my writing, it also helps me remember that my own purpose is not static.
My purpose on a given day might just be to breathe in and out. Or experience the pleasure of an unhurried mind. Or be available to answer the phone when a family member calls.
Sometimes I wonder if Nakase takes enough breaks to allow that kind of shift in purpose. I worry that we are the most at risk of burnout when we’re working on behalf of others, when we’re passing along virtues we learned from our parents.
So I was relieved to know that in the aftermath of Nakase’s collapse, she’s taking her family’s concerns seriously. Her sister is staying with her during the playoffs, leaving out little meals for her to eat on the go. She’s now wearing a heart monitor, and reflecting on how before her dad passed away in 2021, he told her to never let her career get in the way of her health.
It reminded me of my parents: the same people who taught me hard work are also trying to teach me about limits.
So before Game 1 I asked Nakase about what made her dad a cool person, mostly just to put his presence in the room. The joy lit up her face.
“What made my dad a cool person was that he was there for me every single day,” she said. “His love language was basketball, it was discipline, and it was time.”
I was struck by the word time, and realized that I’ve never really allowed myself to fully feel that gratitude to my parents — for being at every one of my games, reading every one of my articles, answering every one of my calls.
Sometimes it really does take a great coach to access a feeling that soft.