Valkyries Make Natalie Nakase First Female Asian American WNBA Head Coach 

The Golden State Valkyries continue to make waves a year before they’re officially welcomed into the WNBA.

The franchise announced Thursday that Natalie Nakase would be its first head coach, making her the first female Asian American head coach in league history. Nakase, who is of Japanese descent, had been an assistant coach with the Las Vegas Aces since 2022 and won back-to-back titles under head coach Becky Hammon.

In 2014, Hammon was the first woman to be named an assistant coach in the NBA by the Spurs. Though Hammon was technically the ceiling-breaking hire, Nakase beat her to becoming the answer to a trivia question when she became the first woman to sit on an NBA bench that summer when she served as an assistant coach for the Los Angeles Clippers’ Summer League team.

She totaled 10 years with the Clippers organization, going from intern to assistant with the G League all the way up to assistant coach to Tyronn Lue. Before joining the Clippers, Nakase, 44, was a head coach in the top German women’s pro league and a men’s assistant in Japan.

As a player, Nakase became the first Asian American woman to play in the now-defunct National Women’s Basketball League from 2005 to 2006. She played college basketball at UCLA for four years.

The Valkyries will make their debut as the WNBA’s 13th franchise next season. The expansion franchise was announced last October, with Warriors owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber paying a $50 million fee for the team. 

In July, two months after the franchise unveiled its name and logo, the team announced it had sold a woman’s pro sports record 15,000 season-ticket deposits.

The ticket sales record came despite the Valkyries being months away from knowing a single player on their roster. The WNBA expansion draft for the Valkyries, the league’s first in 16 years, is scheduled on Dec. 7.