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Congratulations to Golden State Valkyries head coach Natalie Nakase, the 2025 WNBA Coach of the Year.
Nakase received 53 of 72 first-place votes, with the Atlanta Dream’s Karl Smesko finishing second with 15 votes. The Las Vegas Aces’ Becky Hammon, the 2022 Coach of the Year, and the Minnesota Lynx’s Cheryl Reeve, who won her fourth honor last season, finished tied for third with two votes each.
Winning Coach of the Year is, ostensibly, about wins and losses. The award often goes to a head coach who exceeds expectations by securing more of the latter and less of the former. Yet, it’s hard not to see Nakase’s Coach of the Year honor encapsulating more than Ws and Ls.
The first-year head coach was the anchor for an expansion franchise that otherwise could have floated waywardly into San Francisco Bay. The Valkyries, lacking the star power and sense familiarity that usually are the foundation of professional teams, needed an identity—and Nakase provided it.
Under her leadership, Golden State cultivated a no-nonsense, no-excuses yet tight-knit culture. Widely projected to be one of the worst teams—if not the very worst team—in the league, the Valkyries adopted the underdog mentality instilled and embodied by Nakase, embracing the preparation and practice required to defy all the doubters. And they did just that, becoming the first WNBA expansion team to earn a playoff berth while winning an expansion-record 23 games.
Nakase’s balancing of the job’s hard skills, most evident in her innovative defensive schemes, with softer skills, from empowering previously underutilized players to navigating injury- and absence-induced roster changes to earning the trust and belief of a totally new group of players from a variety of basketball backgrounds, is why her team overachieved. And it’s why she is the 2025 WNBA Coach of the Year.
And like any great coach, Nakase is quick to credit her players. In a late-season postgame press conference, she expressed appreciation for her players for allowing her to be herself.
Before assuming her role with the Valkyries, Nakase served as an assistant for the back-to-back WNBA champion Aces in 2022 and 2023. Prior to that, she spent 10 seasons on the staff of the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers.
