Rise of the (Golden State) Valkyries » Winsidr

Golden State Valkyries, welcome to the WNBA family. WNBA, welcome to the Bay Area.

After more than a year of anticipation and patience, the Valkyries have finally taken flight with their offseason preparation ahead of their inaugural season. This upcoming spring, the debut of the 13th WNBA team will mark a new era for a league that is continuing to expand.

Who are the people trusted to lead the Valkyries through their introductory years? Natalie Nakase is the head coach, after she spent the previous three WNBA seasons with the Las Vegas Aces as an assistant coach under Becky Hammon. Ohemaa Nyanin is the general manager, after five years with the New York Liberty, including a role as the team’s assistant general manager. Jess Smith, who came over from the NWSL, serves as president of the team.

Prior championship-level experience is within the Valkyries leadership. Nakase’s tenure with Las Vegas included back-to-back championships. Nyanin had a hand in the construction of the current Liberty core by helping to acquire Breanna Stewart, Jonquel Jones and Courtney Vandersloot two offseasons ago, and the Liberty now stand as the reigning WNBA champions. There’s also Joe Lacob and Peter Guber: the owners of the Valkyries who also serve as owners of the team’s NBA counterpart, the Golden State Warriors.

Lacob already has experience and involvement with professional women’s basketball. And, just like Lacob has familiarity with pro women’s basketball, the Bay Area is familiar with having pro women’s basketball teams in the region. The Bay Area was the home of teams including the San Francisco Pioneers (1979-1981) of the Women’s Professional Basketball League, the San Jose Lasers (1996-1998) of the American Basketball League – a league that Lacob was a primary investor of, and the San Jose Spiders (2005-2006) – a team that Nakase once played for – of the National Women’s Basketball League.

At the press conference that introduced Golden State as the newest expansion team in October 2023, Lacob brought up how he guaranteed the Warriors would win a championship within five years after he became the team’s owner in the summer of 2010, and the team achieved that goal in 2015. He proceeded to do the same thing and guarantee a Valkyries championship within the next five years.

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The ring of Lacob’s declaration has been prevalent within the WNBA’s new Bay Area team, serving as a theme that has hovered around for the Valkyries’ ensuing press conferences to introduce their President, their general manager and their head coach; they want to become a competitive team now.

The Valkyries’ roster finally took shape with the expansion draft back on December 6. The team selected a mix of younger players and veteran players; most of their selected players are older and more experienced at the professional level. Most of them are also international players. The team wanted to construct a roster that emphasized three-point shooting and a fast pace of play.

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Golden State’s current roster will not be finalized before the start of training camp and preseason. There are still the options of free agency, trade acquisitions, and the draft in April, for which the Valkyries currently hold the fifth overall pick. Also, some of the international players the team selected, such as Carla Leite, Iliana Rupert and María Conde, may not play in the WNBA this year. Conde suffered an Achilles injury on January 8 while playing overseas, and there is currently no timeline on her return to the court.

As the Valkyries enter the upcoming free agency period and the 2025 draft, they also want to set the foundation for a talented core group of young players to have for the start of the franchise’s WNBA journey. And, it is a journey that Lacob looks forward to being a part of.

“For me personally, it’s a very, very exciting moment to fulfill a dream that I’ve always had for women’s basketball,” Lacob said back at the team’s introductory press conference.

Golden State is the first expansion team to join the league since 2008, when the Atlanta Dream arrived on the scene. The Dream had significant success in their first five years, which is what Lacob is looking for from his new team.

In their inaugural season, the Dream went 4-30. But, after the first season, they brought in new players such as Sancho Lyttle and Chamique Holdsclaw, and drafted Angel McCoughtry with the first overall pick in the 2009 draft. McCoughtry went on to become a staple of the franchise for the next decade.

Over the next four seasons, the Dream went 76-60 in the regular season and played in the postseason in each year. They lost in the conference semifinals to the Detroit Shock in 2009, in the Finals to the Seattle Storm in 2010, in the Finals to the Minnesota Lynx in 2011 and the conference semifinals to the Indiana Fever in 2012. Within the Dream’s first five years of play, they were eliminated by the eventual WNBA champion in three consecutive seasons.

The Dream also made the Finals in 2013 with a 17-17 regular season record, but lost in the Finals to the Lynx. Atlanta is still winless in Finals games (0-9).

Looking at the most recent expansion team, it is possible to become a championship contender (and even more) within the first half-decade of existence. It is about having the right group of players and coaches that have a chemistry that reflects unity and success. For the Valkyries, there is no guarantee that their first few seasons will be identical to those of the Dream. However, Lacob and the rest of the Valkyries’ leadership group have the aspiration and a sense of urgency to build a winner, be competitive and be among the best teams in the league.

Golden State is the first WNBA team in the Bay Area, but not the first one in Northern California. Before the Valkyries, the closest WNBA team to the Bay Area was the Sacramento Monarchs.

Between 1999 and 2008, the Monarchs made the playoffs nine out of those 10 seasons. In the early to mid-2000s, it was an exciting time in Sacramento when it came to professional basketball. Both the Monarchs and their NBA counterpart, the Sacramento Kings, were experiencing success and making quality runs in the postseason. While the Kings knocked on the door of winning a championship, they were not able to achieve that goal. The Monarchs, however, were able to do that.

With players like Ticha Penicheiro, Yolanda Griffin, Rebekkah Brunson and Nicole Powell, the Monarchs made back-to-back Finals appearances in 2005 and 2006; they won the championship in 2005, and came a win shy of repeating the feat in 2006.

The franchise became defunct after the 2009 season. The WNBA was in discussions to possibly move the team to the Bay Area, but nothing materialized and Northern California was devoid of WNBA action for the next 15 years.

The arrival of the Valkyries also raises the potential for rivalries. One future rivalry could be an intrastate matchup between the Valkyries and Los Angeles Sparks. The Valkyries host the Sparks at Chase Center on opening night (May 16) for their regular season debut, and the teams will meet three other times in the regular season.

The Valkyries also have four regular season meetings with the Aces; the first meeting is a Commissioner’s Cup game on June 7 at Chase Center. That game will mark the first meeting for both Nakase and Kate Martin against the Aces since they both departed from Las Vegas, and A’ja Wilson was notably sad about her “rook” leaving her.

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Rivalries can be fun for the league, especially the ones between teams that are in the same or nearby geographical regions. The last season that featured two WNBA teams based in the same state was 2017: the Dallas Wings and San Antonio Stars. Before that, there was the Sparks and Monarchs, and the Orlando Miracle and Miami Sol. There is a potential rivalry on the way with the WNBA returning to Portland with a new expansion team, coming to compete with the Storm for bragging rights in the Pacific Northwest. Maybe in the future, a new WNBA rivalry develops in Northern California between Golden State and Sacramento?

The arrival of the Valkyries (and expansion in general) comes at an opportune time with the current surge in popularity in women’s basketball. Portland and the Toronto Tempo will be watching how the Valkyries’ inaugural season goes, as they prepare for their own respective debuts in 2026.

The Valkyries are determined to follow through on Lacob’s challenge to win a title within five years, but an interesting question to ask is: what will the WNBA landscape look like within the next five years?

Where will the Aces and Liberty, two teams that have collected the last three WNBA titles, be in the championship picture during that time? What about an ascending team like the Fever with Caitlin Clark and Aliyah Boston? What about the Sparks, Wings and Chicago Sky: teams that missed the playoffs last season and struggled with injuries, but have young star talent on their rosters? There is also the anticipated future arrival of stars from the women’s college basketball game, such as Paige Bueckers, JuJu Watkins, Kiki Iriafen, Hannah Hidalgo and Olivia Miles. Where will they land when they get to the league?

Right now, the Liberty are the reigning champions who still have a core that features Stewart, Jones and Sabrina Ionescu. The Lynx were seconds away from winning last season’s championship, and they still have all five starters from last season and are led by Napheesa Collier. The Aces failed to three peat last year, but are still a potent championship threat with Wilson, the reigning and unanimous regular season MVP. The Connecticut Sun can still make noise, especially if they bring back key players such as Alyssa Thomas, DeWanna Bonner, Brionna Jones and DiJonai Carrington. It is an uphill battle for a Golden State team that is just getting started.

The Valkyries have plenty of work to do with roster construction, but they are more than up for the challenge of coming through on Lacob’s declaration.

WNBA fans, enjoy the ride in 2025. The Valkyries are coming!

Stats as of January 23. Unless otherwise noted, stats courtesy of WNBA.com.