Before Wednesday’s game, the WNBA announced that Natalie Nakase won the Coach of the Year award after receiving 53 out of the 72 votes. Last week she had also won the version of the award given out by the Associated Press. The league usually aims to have awards presented before games to those who win them on playoff teams. Nakase and Veronica Burton were able to show off their awards in front of their home fans in a ceremony.
Her Accomplishments
The season that the Valkyries had as an expansion team certainly had Natalie Nakase standing out as one of the favorites for the award from early on in the season. That was capped off by qualifying for the playoffs, a first for an expansion team in their inaugural season. Given where the Golden State would rank if every coaching staff had the choice of rosters around the league to start with, finishing in a tie for seventh place required tremendous work by everyone involved.
Coaching an expansion team required being able to quickly implement a system with players who had never played with each other before and also building team culture from scratch. The task was tougher for the Golden State coaches as they navigated national team and injury absences. The success that players had when it came to being able to contribute immediately showed that coaches accomplished both. Nakase was quick to credit the rest of the coaches and the support staff, but assembling the group also required acumen with not much WNBA experience or time spend working with each other beforehand.
Voting Results
While Natalie Nakase did win the award decisively, there were three other coaches who received votes. Karl Smesko of Atlanta was the runner up with fifteen votes as he led the Dream to the three seed in the playoffs in his first year in the league. There were some questions about how he would transition from a wildly successful college career at the mid-major level, especially given how different the team was built than his best college teams, but he delivered impressive results, even though their season ended with a playoff disappointment. Cheryl Reeve earned a pair of votes after the Minnesota Lynx were the top team in the regular season by a comfortable margin. Becky Hammon received the other two votes after the Las Vegas Aces closed the regular season on a tremendous winning streak to finish with the second seed after tying Atlanta.
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