Natalie Nakase’s unlikely journey: a 5-foot-2 walk-on, coach in Japan, and now in the WNBA Finals

Every step of her basketball journey, there was a logical reason why Natalie Nakase was unlikely to get a shot. At 5-foot-2, she didn’t have the profile (even as a walk-on) to play at UCLA. She played professionally in the shadows, competing for unheralded teams like the San Jose Spiders and San Diego Siege in the short-lived and now-defunct National Women’s Basketball League. From there, she coached in largely unrecognized outposts, like leading the Saitama Broncos in Japan or the Wolfenbüttel Wildcats in Germany. For Nakase, it didn’t matter where she played or coached. Didn’t matter if it was men or women. Didn’t matter if there were big crowds or none at all. As long as there was a basketball. Her gumption slowly opened doors. Her talent and vision of the game kept getting her to the next rung of the coaching ladder, landing on Doc Rivers’ staff as a Clippers assistant before joining the WNBA’s Aces with Becky Hammon and then being plucked by Joe Lacob as the Golden State Valkyries first coach. “Hey, I wasn’t that talented of a player, so? I think what I’ve learned is, no matter your size, it’s really more your heart and your fight that comes out,” she said. “That was to me something I really wanted to instill (as a coach).” How fitting a mindset for the woman who has a second-year expansion franchise fighting for a championship, tied 2-2 with the Atlanta Dream in the WNBA Finals . Nakase, 46, assembled a group of players — many of whom had been cast-offs — and molded underdogs into predators. “I still wanted to bring another level of fight and confidence into them, because that’s for me the biggest thing,” she said. “You don’t always have to be the tallest player. You don’t have to be the fastest or most athletic, but if you have a fight in you, that never-quit type of mentality, I think you can go pretty far.” Those who witnessed Nakase’s dogged determination along her journey learned not to doubt how far she’d go. The grinder In the sectional championships at Marina High in Huntington Beach, Calif., a 5-foot-2 point guard dropped 27 points with eight assists. She was named the conference player of the year and graduated as the school’s career leader in assists, steals and 3-pointers. Marina’s then-coach, Pete Bonny, saw her basketball premonitions at a young age. “She was always a play ahead of the game,” he said. “’If we press here and get a turnover, then they’ll take it out. Then maybe we can get a five count. If not, we’re down. We’ll shoot a 3 because we’re down six and it’s two possessions.’ Stuff like that. She’s just ahead of everybody by a little bit.” She earned a scholarship offer from UC Irvine, but not UCLA. “I thought she was a good leader, but she was tiny,” said former UCLA coach Kathy Oliver. Nakase and her dad visited Oliver’s office and her dad mostly made a case for her. “We already had one of the best point guards in the country, Erica Gomez,” Oliver said. “So I thought, ‘OK, she can come, but I don’t have a scholarship for her.’ So, she walked on her first year.” When Nakase tore her ACL, she impressed Oliver. And the experience likely shaped her as a future coach. “She was a sponge. She watched Erica like a hawk. She was my little shadow. She’d follow me around when we were doing drills. She stayed by my side and was engulfed in the game. But she was a really good people-person. She got along with her teammates and was very observant,” said Oliver, who coached Nakase from 2005-08. “I was thinking, ‘What is this girl going to do? She’s injured. She’s tiny.’ The next year, she worked so hard in rehab, worked so hard to get back. … Never count her out.” She became the Bruins’ starting point guard as a sophomore. “She was a great leader,” Oliver said, “and so smart on the court.” The film junkie After college, Nakase played professionally in the U.S. and in Germany, where another knee injury ended her playing career in her late 20s. She stayed in Germany and started coaching, and eventually was the head coach with the Tokyo Apache and Saitama Broncos — becoming the first woman coach in Japan’s top-tier men’s league, working there from 2010-12. As a young coach, she dug in on film. “Every time we had a road game, on the bus, she would sit down and watch film with me. She’d point out little things. She was really into film and brilliant on it. She pointed out things that most of the time, I didn’t see, especially as a rookie,” said John Flowers, a small forward for the Broncos. Even with admittedly stubborn players, Nakase remained patient to get her philosophies across. “I played for Bob Huggins in college. He has a specific style of play. I’m coming out of college, like this is how you’re supposed to play basketball. This is the only way. This is the right way. I was showing her plays that we ran at (West Virginia). … She was telling me, ‘That won’t work here because it’s pro basketball. It’s a different game.’ I didn’t really listen. … I looked back and I was like, ‘Damn, she was right this whole time. I should have just listened to it the whole time.’ Three or four years later, I texted her: ‘Man, I was such an idiot.’” The over-achiever In the 2017–18 season, Nakase served as an assistant for the G League’s Agua Caliente Clippers under Casey Hill, who had worked with her in Japan. “It was a no-brainer. She was the first hire I made. I needed a very efficient coaching staff that didn’t need a whole lot to be effective, and she was at the top of that list. It was pretty apparent from when we met — basketball means everything to her.” Her first scouting report together had already made an impression on him. “It was like freaking nine pages long,” Hill said. “It wasn’t just like a blurb on each player. It was like a full paragraph. … I kind of knew from that point, this girl is going to figure out a way to make an impact in the world of basketball.” Hill and Nakase were later promoted to the L.A. Clippers’ staff under Doc Rivers, where Nakase served from 2018-2020. The ‘only one’ in the room Nakase belongs to an exclusive sorority. She’s one of 15 female NBA assistant coaches, spending 2018-2020 on the Los Angeles Clippers staff. Jenny Boucek, an NBA assistant since 2017, recommended Nakase to her friend and Aces coach Becky Hammon, who had been the NBA’s first full-time female assistant coach. (As part of the Aces staff from 2022-24, Nakase won two WNBA championships.) Nakase was the first woman to sit on an NBA bench during Summer League. She is also the WNBA’s first Asian-American head coach. “Anytime you’re the only one in the room, it takes a certain inner security, resilience and humility,” Boucek said. “You’re gonna deal with some stuff just from being the only one and being different all the time. There’s a lot of battles that you can pick, or you can take it and learn and keep the big picture in mind. That’s clearly what Natalie did.” The baller As an L.A. Clippers assistant, Ty Lue was constantly challenged by his fellow assistant …. on the court. “She thought she could beat me at one-on-one,” said Lue, now the Clippers head coach. “We played every day, and of course, you know the results of that.” Nakase would change some rules to gain an edge, but she never stopped trying to beat him. “Every day she wanted that challenge. She always wanted to fight and continue to keep playing.” Similarly, he noticed how she brought out that fight in players to get the most from them. He credits guard Terance Mann’s progress from a raw rookie into the player who eventually had a series defining performance in the 2021 Western Conference finals. “With all the film work, with all the player development, ballhandling stuff, how to read certain situations, she was really good,” Lue said. “She kept saying, ‘I’m telling you this guy is ready.’” Authentic interviewee After three seasons as an Aces assistant, Nakase interviewed to be the head coach of the league’s first expansion team in more than a decade. General manager Ohemaa Nyanin was impressed with Nakase’s character, experience and expertise. She was also impressed with Nakase’s word choices during the interview. “She let some expletives fly through the process. You know how like you go to an interview and you’re on your best behavior? She showed me who she was from jump, and I just thought that that was really endearing because our athletes need people that are going to be open, honest, direct, kind, provide clarity, but also be authentic. … It didn’t seem like she was auditioning for something. She presented herself as this was her calling.” — Law Murray and Sabreena Merchant contributed to this report. This article originally appeared in The Athletic . Golden State Valkyries, WNBA, Culture 2026 The Athletic Media Company