Natalie Nakase Makes WNBA History As Valkyries Head Coach
By Kelli Luu | 21 Mar, 2025

A Japanese American scrapper survived the long rocky road to becoming head coach of the newest expansion team.

On October 10, 2024 Natalie Nakase realized a lifelong ambition by being named head coach of the Golden State Valkyries expansion team, making her the first ever Asian American WNBA coach.  

Come May 16 she and the Valkyries will begin appearing in a series of 17 nationally televised games, starting with the Ion Network for their inaugural game against the Los Angeles Sparks at Chase Center.

At 5-2 she had no right to be on a basketball court at all, not even in high school.  Undaunted, Natalie Nakase went on to lead Huntington Beach’s Marina High to two Sunset League titles.  In 1998, her senior year, Nakase averaged 13.9 points and 8.6 assists to earn Player of the Year honors from both the LA Times and the Orange County Register.  

Her go-for-broke style was evident in her decision to forego a full-ride scholarship to UC Irvine to take her chances at UCLA where she had always dreamed of playing.  

The August Nakase walked onto the Bruins squad as a freshman a left ACL (ligament in the back of the knee) injury forced her to have reconstructive surgery and redshirt for the year.  That didn’t keep her from coming back fierier than ever.  For her final three years as a Bruin she point-guarded the team, averaging 4.9 points and 3.7 assists per game.  

Nakase’s height proved a barrier to being recruited by a WNBA team.  But she did manage to play a year each for the San Jose Spiders (2005) and the San Diego Siege (2006) of the NWBL (National Women’s Basketball League), an off-season league that debuted in 1997 and lasted until 2007.  

In 2007 Nakase tried out unsuccessfully for the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury.  That was followed by a season in Germany with the Wolfenbüttel Wildcats in 2008 where she again tore an ACL.  That injury ended her playing career but launched her coaching career as Wildcats’ head coach.  

Determined to stay in basketball, Nakase was able to secure a volunteer assistant coaching gig with the Tokyo Apache of Japan’s professional men’s league.  That led to an assistant coaching job with the Saitama Broncos.  When the struggling team’s head coach quit, Nakase became the team’s head coach, making a bit of Japanese basketball history.

At the urging of her father Nakase returned to the States later that year to pursue her dreams of a US coaching career.  A small but important step came in 2012 when she scored a video internship with the Los Angeles Clippers.  She worked hard to become an essential part of the coaching team. By 2018 she was a full-fledged NBA assistant for the Clippers.

In 2022 Nakase joined the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces as an assistant coach.  The team won back-to-back championships, giving Nakase the experience of having helped coach a winner and helping her land the head coaching gig with the Valkyries in October of 2024.

As of March Nakase’s Valkyries had already earned buzz as a talent-loaded team, helping them secure 20,000 season ticket deposits, another record in women’s sports history.