NIKKEI 2026 | Tato Takahama Report | Natalie Nakase: The Japanese American Coach Whose Years of Hard Work in Tokyo Led to a WNBA Championship
By Tato Takahama
Pacific Research Institute
November 1, 2026
The Golden State Valkyries defeated the Atlanta Dream 68–63 in Game 7 of the WNBA Finals in San Francisco on October 31, capturing the first championship in the franchise’s history. The woman who led the second-year team to the top was Natalie Nakase, a 46-year-old Japanese American head coach.
Nakase made history as the first Asian American woman to become a head coach in the WNBA. Last season, she guided the newly established Valkyries to a playoff berth in their inaugural year and was named the league’s Coach of the Year. This season, she took the team all the way to a championship.
But Nakase’s success is not the story of a coach who suddenly appeared on the big stage. Her path to the top leads back to her family’s roots in Wakayama Prefecture, Japan, and to the years she spent working behind the scenes with the Tokyo Apache, a Japanese professional men’s basketball team. Two influences stand out in her journey: a work ethic passed down from her grandfather to her father and then to her, and a coaching philosophy she developed under Bob Hill, the Apache’s head coach, built on understanding people and earning their trust.
Nakase’s father, Gary, was born in October 1942 at the Santa Anita Assembly Center in California, during the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans. His mother, Takayo, was pregnant at the time. She had been separated from her husband, Kenichi, and their older son and held at Santa Anita, where she gave birth to Gary. Mother and child were later transferred by train to the Rohwer incarceration camp in Arkansas, where they reunited with the rest of the family.
The Nakase family traces its roots to Wakayama Prefecture. Kenichi and Takayo, Natalie’s grandparents, had immigrated to the United States from Japan as Issei, or first-generation Japanese Americans. According to Natalie, her father founded Nakase Brothers Wholesale Nursery in 1965. The family business of growing and selling plants drew on the experience and knowledge his parents had brought with them from Japan.
Years later, Natalie visited Japan and met a cousin in Wakayama. During that visit, she learned that her grandfather had worked in Japan growing nursery plants. Her cousin described him as “the hardest-working man he had ever known.”
That remark helped Natalie understand where her father’s work ethic came from. In an interview, she recalled:
“The coolest thing I found out about my grandfather was that he was the hardest-working man my cousin had ever known. And so, I thought, no wonder my dad is the hardest-working man I know. He didn’t just become that way out of nowhere. He worked hard because of his father, and then my dad poured that work ethic into me.”
Her father set high expectations for his daughter. He taught her never to settle for doing something halfway, to push beyond her limits, and to take pride in her work. When she was young, Natalie did not always understand why he was so demanding. But after visiting Japan and learning more about her grandfather, she began to see her father’s expectations in a different light. What she had once regarded as strictness was part of a family tradition handed down through generations.
Natalie was born in Anaheim, California, in 1980. At Marina High School, she led the team to a CIF Southern Section championship in 1998. She went on to play point guard at UCLA, where she had joined the team as a walk-on and eventually became a starter and team captain. She pursued a professional basketball career, playing in the United States and Germany. But a knee injury eventually made it impossible for her to continue as a player. In 2008, she turned to coaching.
Her first coaching experience came in Germany. In 2010, she moved to Japan and joined the staff of the Tokyo Apache, a professional men’s basketball team. There she met Bob Hill, a coach with experience in the NBA.
Her start with the Apache was anything but glamorous. Natalie had been introduced to Hill by an old friend, Darin Maki, who was then a player on the team. Hill allowed her to observe practice, but his instructions were clear: “You can watch, but stay off the court.”
Still, Natalie showed up at the gym every day. She arrived early, watched practice, and looked for anything she could do to help. She stayed on Maki’s couch and kept coming back, hoping that eventually she would be given a role. Hill did not turn her away. In time, he assigned her to prepare scouting reports on opposing teams.
Natalie studied game footage and compiled reports on opponents’ players, their tendencies, and their offensive strategies. During practice, she also helped with rebounding and shared her observations with the players. She did more than simply carry out assigned tasks. She looked for what the team needed and found ways to contribute.
Her abilities gradually became apparent to the players as well. Casey Hill, Bob Hill’s son and a member of the Tokyo Apache staff at the time, remembers watching Natalie join the players during shooting practice and outshoot them.
She also beat the players in a shooting game known as “H-O-R-S-E.” Rather than show off with long-range shots or difficult tricks, Natalie chose shots she knew she could make consistently, from four to six feet away from the basket. She would announce, “All net,” and take the shot. The approach was simple: she played to her strengths and made the shots she knew she could deliver.
But Hill taught her more than basketball strategy and how to organize practices. What had a lasting impact on her as a coach was the way he treated his players.
One Thanksgiving, Hill invited the entire team to his home. Thanksgiving was not a familiar holiday for many of the Japanese players, but he welcomed them into his house, shared a meal with them, and even sang karaoke with them. Natalie saw the players in a setting far removed from the routines of the gym. They were relaxed and showing a side of themselves she rarely saw during practice.
Looking back, she said she came to understand that Hill valued his players not simply as basketball players but as people. She remembered that some of the Japanese players were shy, which made his gesture of inviting the team into his home and spending time with them especially meaningful.
Natalie learned that giving people your time may be the most important thing you can do for them. Leading a team takes more than giving instructions. It requires taking an interest in people, listening to them, and making the effort to get to know them.
Today, when asked about the secret to her coaching style, she often says, “Just ask them. That’s really the secret.” What do the players think? What do they need? She starts by asking them. Rather than imposing her own answers, she builds trust by listening to the people she coaches.
The roots of that approach go back to her time with the Tokyo Apache. She did not become famous in Tokyo. During those early years, when she was not even allowed onto the court, she kept showing up at the gym, taking on whatever work was available and learning from Hill. What she gained in Tokyo was not a title or recognition. It was the foundation for the coach she would become.
After leaving the Tokyo Apache, Natalie worked with the Saitama Broncos. She became the first woman to serve as a head coach in Japan’s men’s professional basketball league.
She later returned to the United States and joined the Los Angeles Clippers, beginning as a video coordinator and moving into player development and coaching roles. In the 2018–19 season, she became the fourth woman to coach during an NBA regular season, and the first to do so in Los Angeles.
Beginning in 2022, she served as an assistant coach with the Las Vegas Aces, helping the team win WNBA championships in 2022 and 2023. In October 2024, she was named the inaugural head coach of the Golden State Valkyries. She won Coach of the Year in 2025. A year later, she led the second-year franchise to its first WNBA championship.
There is another part of Natalie’s story worth noting: her connection to the Japanese American community. Judith Fujito, a longtime Japanese American resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, was an enthusiastic fan of both the Valkyries and Natalie.
Fujito was a Sansei, or third-generation Japanese American, who had been incarcerated with her family at Manzanar as a young child. Her husband had been held at the Santa Anita Assembly Center, where Natalie’s father was born.
Fujito loved sports and looked forward to watching the Valkyries play. She had metastatic breast cancer and died on August 13, 2026, at the age of 86. The night before her death, she watched the team’s game with her family.
A third-generation Japanese American journalist who had served as a Tokyo correspondent for a major American newspaper was also watching the Valkyries win the championship on television. She found herself moved to tears.
She, too, had visited the homeland of her grandparents and learned about their diligence and perseverance. Natalie’s journey, with its roots in Wakayama, struck a deep personal chord.
“Natalie worked incredibly hard in a sport where Japanese Americans are often assumed to be physically unable to compete with other Americans. But an injury forced her to give up her playing career. Even then, she did not leave basketball. She stayed on the court as a coach and eventually lifted the championship trophy. She is a role model for Japanese Americans.”
Natalie refused to walk away from basketball even after an injury ended her dream of playing professionally. The young woman who had once been told she could not step onto the court at a gym in Tokyo kept showing up. She learned the work, studied the players, and learned how to lead. Years later, she stood at the top of the WNBA.
A journey that began with an Issei family from Wakayama had, three generations later, reached the championship stage in San Francisco.
Reference
- Chantel Jennings, “Natalie Nakase’s Asian American roots help inspire her community on and off the court,” The Athletic, October 30, 2026.
- Kenzo Fukuda, “Exclusive: How Natalie Nakase’s Tokyo Apache roots developed her Valkyries coaching philosophy,” ClutchPoints, September 27, 2026.
- “How The Japanese-American Basketball Leagues Built Natalie Nakase,” Defector, 2025.
- “Game Recap: Golden State Valkyries vs. Atlanta Dream (Finals, Game 7),” WNBA.com / Associated Press, November 1, 2026.
- “Natalie Nakase,” Gold House.
2026 NOV | A Japanese View from America | PRI | 東京の下積み生活が育てた「日系三世女性バスケ監督」――WNBAを制したナタリー・ナカセの原点
Note: English Translation was prepared by the author. Translation assistance tools may have been used.