SAN FRANCISCO — Natalie Nakase told Gabby Williams to stay patient. After scoring only two points in the first half of Game 7, Williams’s coach kept the halftime message simple. And Williams didn’t second guess it. “I trust her. I trust her with my life,” Williams said after the game.
Trust falling backwards into the second half, Williams scored 28 points and drained four three-pointers in the most important two quarters of her life. Twenty minutes after Nakase gently reminded Williams that patience is a virtue, the Valkyries guard had goggles affixed to her forehead, the MVP trophy in one hand and a drink in another, finishing with 30 points (joining Penny Taylor as the only player to score 30-plus points in a winner-take-all Finals game), three steals and block in a career-defining, MVP-sealing performance in a 68–63 win over the Dream.
“We were making jokes, like, ‘Well I can’t wait to win and shut everybody up.’ … but I’m not even about to focus on that, I want to focus on the people who just believed in me this whole time,” Williams said with the glimmer of the league trophy sitting in front of her, catching her eye. “There was obviously a lot of negativity, but tonight I just want to focus on the positive because there were a lot of people that believed in us and believed in me as well.”
One of those people was Alfonso Joo, Williams’s childhood coach at the youth basketball club, the Bay Area BullDawgs, and someone Wiliams likens to a father figure. He was one of the first people to meet Williams on the Chase Center court on Saturday night, with the mentee burying her face in the crook of her mentor’s neck. He could’ve told you that she was built for crunch time long before she was crowned a WNBA champion; he could see that in the spunky nine year old that turned up at his gym 21 years ago.
“Gabby was never ever tired,” Joo says. “She may have been tired inside, but she didn’t show weakness.”
Everyone loves an underdog story. Fans and media laud the underrated player who finally gets their due; the Cinderella team that pulls off the unthinkable. But the journey to the Promised Land is often less glamorous than the dark horse trope suggests. Just ask the Valkyries and they’ll tell you all about walking through the flames before flaunting the league trophy they were rewarded with on the other side. Golden State’s rapid two-year ascension from expansion team to WNBA champions, capped by a gutsy Finals series against Atlanta, was as much about the process as the result. It had to be, with the California team committed to the day-in, day-out grind of collective blue-collar basketball.
“It started with us, it started with us believing in each other, and that’s so special,” Williams said. “We just kept our circle so tight to shut out the outside noise, shut out whatever the talk about ‘we don’t have this,’ or whatever. We just focused on the good stuff, focused on the positive, and that was a beautiful thing to come into every day and feel that.”
One might think a group defined by guts and fight would wear a hard shell. But Nakase got her squad to buy into her brand of tough, working-class-esque hustle by encouraging her players to soften and lay themselves bare. A meditative undercurrent flowed beneath each Golden State defensive masterclass. Early on in the postseason, in a decisive Game 3 in the first-round series against the Wings, Veronica Burton gathered her teammates into a huddle, locking arms and leaning in; Williams, Kiah Stokes, Kaila Charles and Kayla Thornton followed her lead. They all took a long inhale, sipping in air before letting out a mollifying exhale. It spurred a comeback and sent a message to the remaining playoff teams about the centered juggernaut that lay in wait.
Nakase, too, has taken to a cleansing breath. Throughout the Finals, the Golden State coach has continued to listen to her dad, who passed away in 2021 and would remind her “when your health and your mental health gets a little complicated to take a breath.” Also inspired by veteran Tiffany “Tip” Hayes, who says she meditates every day and has worked this season to temper her competitive drive with a sense of zen, Nakase began to imbue her fiery disposition with composed clarity. After all, if ever there was a place where woo-woo and grit might meld, it’s the Bay Area.
“A lot of my mentors are saying, ‘take a breath,’” Nakase said after momentum-shifting Game 4. “That’s the biggest thing is because I want this so bad. So it’s like I said, being balanced, finding zen, taking a breath.”
When Golden State owner Joe Lacob promised that the Valkyries would win a championship within five years of joining the league as an expansion side in 2025, Nakase knew she had to consult her NBA advisers, Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla and former Cavaliers coach (and current Clippers coach) Tyronn Lue, who also knew a thing or two about bringing home a championship in short order.
Taking their advice, Nakase first got to work on creating a culture of competitors, but also of love.
“As a teammate of hers, I wanted to run through the wall for her,” Michelle Greco says. A former pro who played basketball with Nakase at UCLA starting in 1998, and still counts her as a dear friend, Greco remembers Nakase as a natural-born leader.
“She had this unique way of calling out her teammates, but not in a threatening way,” Greco says. “She definitely has a way about her that I think now, seeing her as a coach, the players really relate to that. They like that approach.”
So, with lowered shoulders—and activated parasympathetic nervous systems—Nakase’s side bought what their coach was selling and harnessed their competitive advantage: vulnerability. After taking Game 1 of the Finals in front of its endlessly loyal, loud Ballhalla crowd, Golden State got a daunting reality check in Games 2 and 3 and was utterly dominated by the Angel Reese–led Dream. In response, Nakase did what few coaches would have the courage or humility to, and instead of digging in, she adapted. Asking her players questions, Nakase listened to her team and implemented their feedback on her delivery in the middle of a high-stakes Finals series.
“Just credit to our players. They’re super vulnerable after losses,” Nakase said after Game 4. “And like I mentioned before, we get even closer after losses because we learn from our lessons after losses.” Many of those post-defeat dialogues were productive because, Williams says, Nakase went out of her way to ask each player how they like to be talked to and came in with open ears. A simple step that more than a few coaches miss. “I think when your leader doesn’t point the finger at others and says, ‘Oh, it’s your fault, it’s the player’s fault, it’s this person’s fault,’ and then the players follow suit, you know,” Williams says. “We all look at each other first. And I think that starts with [Nakase].”
That’s why Golden State had never lost back-to-back games before its Finals slide. In the face of an unprecedented slip, Nakase didn’t just switch up her tone; she also made the bold move of altering her starting five. Swapping out Cecilia Zandalasini and Thornton for Hayes and Charles, the new look ignited an early-game spark Golden State had been missing in the first three Finals matchups.
“Our team is our strength,” Nakase said. “We’ve said strength in numbers, and on our team about anybody could close, anyone could start, anyone can come off the bench, anyone could finish the game.”
The Valkyries come by their egoless disposition honestly, with many finding their way to Golden State after years of being overlooked or underrated. Journeywomen and dawgs, yes, but anointed superstars, no. However, Nakase saw something in each of her players that many others didn’t, making Ballhalla into a mythical hall for untapped potential.
For some reason, Stokes’s Midas touch flew under the radar for years, even after winning three titles with the Aces. When the 33-year-old signed with the Valkyries ahead of the 2026 season, she wasn’t even slotted as Nakase’s starting center; that job was supposed to go to Iliana Rupert, who sat out this season after announcing her pregnancy. But that was no problem for Stokes, whom Nakase describes as consistent, unflappable and uninterested in attention. Taking pride as a looming defensive powerhouse, Stokes delights in doing the dirty work. Stokes set a Finals record with 19 blocks, shutting down the paint and denying Reese a clear look at the basket in one of the best defensive performances ever seen in a WNBA postseason. But it was her offensive output in Game 5, knocking down three three-pointers and finishing with 13 points, that set the Valkyries on a course to glory. Nakase says it was at that moment, after Stokes’s career-defining performance, that she knew the Valkyries were a championship-caliber team. Williams knew it too.
“I knew it, as soon as he signed here. I knew it, I was like, ‘O.K., it’s done, done deal, championship, it’s done, that m—–f—– a winner, period,’” Williams said.
Like Stokes, Williams wound her way through illustrious programs like UConn, where she won two national championships under Geno Auriemma, led the French national team to a silver medal at the Paris Olympics, won EuroLeague twice and competed for the Sky and Storm for seven WNBA seasons before finally before getting her flowers in the Bay. Returning to where she got her basketball start, too. Joo has always known Williams to be determined and undaunted, but also a person who when she starts “giggling, you just want to giggle along with her.” Joo recalls taking Williams out to dinner after practices and games, and every time he would fib and tell the waiters it was her birthday so they would sing and bring out a cake. “She’d just laugh and crack up,” Joo says. “She couldn’t hold a straight face.”
So when Williams called him for advice ahead of a potential move to Golden State before the 2026 season, the two covered everything from California taxes to Joo offering to cook for her every single day if she decided to make the leap. “So, I hoped for the best,” Joo says. “I didn’t want to pressure her, but I just wanted to make sure she knew all the pluses, which was that this area would just totally be behind you. And you would just be so successful here.”
And just as the Bay Area fans lifted Williams up, she elevated the Valkyries to new heights, acting as Golden State’s motor throughout her inaugural campaign in the city. She endeared herself to fans with her versatile game and off-court whim, quoting Bay Area rapper Too $hort and shouting out the Valkyries’ dedicated gay supporters. Ballhalla—one of the most sonorous settings in sports—was always going to Ballhalla, but Williams’s authentic connection to the fan base solidified the bond between the team and its diehards.
“I was fortunate to have Gabby just because her dad trusted me and she loved the style of the Bay Area,” Joo says of a young Williams. “She just loved the style of defensive to offense. It’s there. And her swag. It’s that sense of just her comfort zone.”
Joo knew that Williams was a luminary long before the WNBA was wowed by her star turn under Nakase, who valued and deployed her defensive doggedness in new ways. Finishing second in Defensive Player of the Year voting behind Reese, Williams was the head of the snake, keeping time on one of the best defenses the league has ever seen.
“Every single time she’s been put with an obstacle in front of her, she’s overcome,” Joo says. “So the strength and confidence of this kid, I don’t think everybody has really realized how much she’s endured.”
Up and down Nakase’s roster are examples like Stokes and Williams, previously underestimated players who found a captive audience and fitting stage in Golden State. Burton, who the Valkyries selected from the Sun during the 2024 expansion draft, is in many ways this team’s bedrock, taking the keys to Nakase’s offense and never looking back. “It may not look fancy and pretty as maybe you guys have seen in other Finals,” Nakase said after Game 5, “but this is her way. This is her way of showing she is the best point guard in the league. It’s that grittiness. It’s that leadership. It’s that toughness.”
Burton, along with Thornton and Hayes—among others—were the pioneers, laying groundwork of the Valkyries’ hard-nosed identity in their inaugural 2025 season. And their blueprint served as a war plan for Golden State’s championship uprising. Nervous about her new job, Nakase (who coached Hayes and Stokes as an assistant with the Aces) popped the question to Hayes: Would she join her on the West Coast to play for an unknown quantity in the league’s next expansion side—the equivalent of a leap of faith? Nakase calls Hayes her why—in part for making that jump—inspired to win it all for the 37-year-old star. Hayes wasn’t simply a security blanket for Nakase, either: The former Sixth Woman of the Year was the among the litany of players to enjoy something of a renaissance under the Valkyries coach.
All this emphasis on undervalued skill? It’s personal for Nakase. She once was that 5′ 2″ point guard trying to play taller than her stature at UCLA, but, like the athletes she’s drawn to, there was more to her than meets the eye.
“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 in tough moments,” Nakase said. “And so I think that was, to me, something I really wanted to instill.”
A little closer to the court than most, Nakase sees the game from a different vantage point. But it only sharpened her basketball mind, which Greco calls “brilliant.” Nakase will shut down a restaurant talking hoops, a pastime she’s indulged in many times with her longtime friend. “I think that’s developed her eye and she’s able to quickly adapt and see things that other coaches may not,” Greco says.
Affectionately referred to as a basketball sicko, Nakase is almost pathological in her pursuit of perfection. She calls herself an “obsession extremist,” admitting that she enjoys “going beyond the limits” and “testing my boundaries a little.” Her players, she concedes, need joy. But her? She runs solely on the vapor of victory.
“Natalie wants to win,” Greco says. “She’s obsessed with wanting to be great. And that’s what she strived for in every facet of her life as a player and now as a coach.”
So how does it feel to win it all? Does it live up to what she imagined?
“F— yeah,” Nakase said.
The voice of another of Nakae’s mentors, Armond Hill, echoed in her head as she neared the mountaintop on Saturday, cutting through Nakase’s eagerness and perfectionism. “Grasshopper, patience, right? Patience. It’s going to be a long fight,” Nakase said, recounting Hill’s message. Lucky for Nakase, after only two years at the helm and a lot of deep breaths, the fight wasn’t so long after all, as patience gave way to the instant gratification of victory.
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