Executives from the newest WNBA franchise — Jess Smith, Ohemaa Nyanin, and Natalie Nakase — discuss building an expansion team from scratch.
The WNBA has not welcomed an expansion franchise since the Atlanta Dream in 2008. So when the Golden State Warriors and majority stakeholder Joe Lacob were granted the opportunity to bring a women’s basketball franchise to the Bay Area for the first time, they really had to create a blueprint for a new W team from scratch.
Three foundational hires were brought in to run the organization as it prepares for its first game next May. In January, Jess Smith was hired as Team President from NWSL power Angel City, where she was its head of revenue. In May, Ohemaa Nyanin came over from the New York Liberty as General Manager, days before the team unveiled its Valkyries nickname and lavender, black, and white color scheme. And in October, the Valkyries hired Las Vegas Aces assistant coach Natalie Nakase as its first-ever head coach.
Smith, Nyanin, and Nakase visited Boardroom’s Manhattan offices earlier this week to discuss their vision for the future, fulfilling Lacob’s mandate to win a WNBA championship within five years.
“We want to be the best in everything that we do, from ownership to the three of us individually,” Smith told Boardroom. “Collectively, we don’t want to lose at literally anything, on the court, off the court. We want to lead in every single metric that there is to lead in. And that is how we approach every single day.”
When the Warriors were awarded the WNBA’s 13th franchise on Oct. 5, 2023, the only things that were truly determined were that home games would be played at the Chase Center in San Francisco and the practice facility would be at the old Dubs complex in Oakland. Literally, every other aspect of this team was on the table and up for discussion. Smith came aboard with a blank canvas, providing both great freedom and a daunting challenge.
“At the beginning,” she said, “you really have to figure out who you are and what you’re going to bring to this world before you’re asking anyone to pay attention to you, work with you, invest in you.”
That includes getting your brand right, how the team will interact with the local community, and hiring the right people to propel a chosen concept forward. While many hoops fans assumed the franchise would choose Warriors blue and gold as its color scheme, Smith and Co. elected to create its own legacy.
Season ticket deposits came in by the thousands from day one, committing to a concept with barely anything public or even decided internally. As that total increased to 21,000, Smith realized that only 5% were Warriors season ticket holders. Clearly, the product would be uniquely its own with a completely different fan base and core constituency.
When the San Francisco Chronicle ran an article earlier this year asking fans what they think the team name should be, 25% of them wrote in the Valkyries. From that point forward, Smith said nothing else competed with that nickname.
“The minute that name was a part of the conversation, everything else just felt dull and recycled,” Smith said. “The Valkyries was something we could own. This is ours. Nothing else competed. Nobody’s done it before.”
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Building A First Foundation
After five years with the Liberty, while greatly cherishing the relationships she built ascending to the role of assistant general manager, Nyanin accepted Golden State’s general manager position hoping to create the organization and community she would love to have emulated. That began with hiring Vanja Černivec as Vice President of Basketball Operations and Nakase as head coach, Nyanin’s top two people she wanted to hire if she ever got the opportunity to make those types of decisions. They joined the Head of Ticketing, Maria Valdehueza, and Kimberly Veale, the Senior Vice President of Marketing Communications.
In many ways, Nyanin joined the Liberty when they were a de facto expansion franchise themselves. The team rapidly lost relevance and interest as New York played its home games at the 5,000-seat Westchester County Center, with an average attendance of just over 2,200, which was worst in the league by more than 2,000 when they went 10-24 in 2019. Half a decade later, under new ownership with a newly formed superteam, the Liberty sold out the Barclays Center as they hoisted their first championship in October, a title Nyanin played a pivotal role in despite having moved on to the Valkyries several months earlier.
“The biggest thing I learned is that relationships matter,” Nyanin told Boardroom, “and they have to be authentic and battle-tested.”
As an assistant coach with the Aces beloved by her players, Nakase won at the Liberty and Nyanin’s expense when Las Vegas defeated New York last year for its second straight title. Among many lessons learned under the Aces head coach, Becky Hammon was having an open heart and letting people in when getting to know players and coworkers.
“Just give them time, your energy, and an open ear,” Nakase told Boardroom. “The key is to get them to run through a wall for you. So you have to show them that care first, and then they’ll listen to you pretty quickly.”
But before Nakase could motivate these players, the Valkyries needed to acquire some in last week’s expansion draft. Throughout the 2024 season, Nyanin had a separate Excel spreadsheet for each of the 12 WNBA teams, shifting names around while constantly communicating with Černivec and later Nakase on the type of athlete they’d want to represent their team and the Bay. Nyanin studied past expansion drafts across different leagues and sports to help shape her overarching strategy, ultimately electing not to make any trades before or during the process.
Nakase wants her players to hang their hats on the defensive end, tough and gritty, while playing unselfishly and fundamentally sound on offense. They must be ultra-competitive while hating to lose, possess a high level of character and selflessness, and never become satisfied by doing whatever it takes to come out on top.
“I want to be battle-tested every night,” Nakase said, echoing Nyanin. “We’re going to use that phrase a ton because I want them to really play as if their lives depended on it.”
“With the competitiveness of where the league is currently,” Nyanin added, “we don’t want to come in and be soft.”
The Valkyries selected 11 players from seven different countries, including Americans Kayla Thornton from the Liberty and Kate Martin from the Aces. Nyanin said the staff challenged each other daily to ensure they were confident in each pick. However, she also pointed out that six of those players hail from Europe, which may complicate matters given the important EuroBasket tournament takes place in June when 11 of the team’s 44 regular season games occur.
“Natalie said we need players, and so we took that into consideration, and we didn’t know if these athletes would want to come over or not,” Nyanin said. “Those conversations will be had in the coming weeks to figure out how we move forward in free agency and the collegiate draft.”
Along with the fifth choice in April’s draft, the Valkyries are projected to have among the most cap space in the league to acquire star players via free agency or trade. When asked if we can expect current or former WNBA All-Stars on Golden State next season, all the executive trio said is that you’ll see a competitive, versatile, selfless roster with the endurance and conditioning to withstand a regular season four games longer than last year coinciding with an expanded postseason format.
Building For The Bay, Women’s Sports
Whenever Jess Smith walks outside in the Bay Area in a Valkyries sweatshirt, she says people want to talk about the team and how and why they became fans of women’s sports. They’re yearning, she said, for a cool mix of sports, culture, and community.
A lot of that ethos is reflected in not just the team’s primary V logo but its recently introduced secondary logos, a 3D bold GSV wordmark, and a unique figurine logo that introduced gold into the Valkyries’ color scheme. The logo launches were executed in collaboration with Esther Wallace’s Playa Society. Those different looks provide something different for every fan, Smith said, to represent the team and the Bay in different ways.
It’s also helpful when you have the support of Stephen Curry, Draymond Green, and the rest of the Warriors, who warmed up for a game wearing the secondary logo on Playa Society gear earlier this week.
“We constantly have this layer of these superstar human beings asking ‘how can I help,'” Smith said.
Before he embarked to Paris to coach the US Men’s Olympic team in July, Warriors head coach Steve Kerr asked Smith for some Valkyries shirts for the trip. The day after the American men won gold at the women’s gold medal game, Kerr sat courtside in a Valkyries tee.
One night during the new regular season, the three visiting Valkyries execs were invited by the Warriors to sit courtside. After the game, Nakase overheard someone shouting “Coach, Coach” to her. It was Curry, introducing himself and agreeing to eventually shoot during Valkyries practice with players and advise them on the proper mentality to succeed.
“For any of our players to get a little bit of insight into how he thinks and prepares,” Nakase said, “that’s priceless right there.”
The major challenge for Smith and the Valkyries is bringing vibrant, energetic, winning basketball to the fans while being a profitable business whose success will lead to the WNBA’s growth. As the league looks to sustain last season’s momentum, the Valkyries will look to help ensure greater pay equity for players via a larger salary cap and more sponsorship and investment capital coming in for all of women’s sports. The mission-driven part of the team’s business, Smith said, will see dollars go back into the community through main jersey sponsor Kaiser Permanente and highlighting small businesses via key sponsor Chase Freedom.
Every morning, Smith thinks about what she and her staff will feel on May 16 when the Valkyries host the Los Angeles Sparks in front of a sold-out Chase Center in the team’s inaugural game. It will be the culmination of months of designing the team’s logo, jersey, brand, and merch that’s been sold in all 50 states and 70 different countries. Once Nyanin finalizes the first roster of players to ever wear Valkyries uniforms, her goal for year one is to build a solid and strong foundation for the future while avoiding managerial complacency. Nakase’s goal is to win every single game while learning lessons on nights when the team falls short.
What Nyanin learned during the expansion draft process is that the Valkyries are building the WNBA’s first new franchise in 16 years with the right people ready to build a lasting, winning legacy the entire Bay will be proud of.
“It’s about building trust, building community, and realizing that this is the beginning of a team that will now exist forever,” Smith said.
