Natalie Nakase did it all Friday night.
The Golden State Valkyries' head coach managed rotations to keep her stars fresh without letting go of the rope. She adjusted to spark her team coming back from 16-down in the second half. She kept them grinding and never giving up hope as they played harder than their opponent the entire fourth quarter. And late in that fourth quarter of Game 3's double-elimination showdown, she even collapsed to the ground and nearly passed out.
The tightly contested winner-goes-home Game 3 between the Valkyries and the Dallas Wings was a thriller. The Wings showed up to play. The Valkyries had a titanic comeback, the largest in a playoff elimination game in WNBA history. And with second-year head coach Nakase taking on first-year head coach Jose Fernandez, the coaching victory clearly went to Nakase.
Natalie Nakase coached a master class
It is extremely rare for a team to come back from a 16-point deficit in any game. A team that stakes out such a lead is usually better, or at least playing better on that night. The losing team can lose hope as the lead balloons out to such a size. Without time to watch tape and diagnose the problem, fixing it on the fly is extremely difficult to do.
Add in that this was a playoff elimination game, and no team with a lead is going to let their feet off the pedal. The Valkyries couldn't just shrug and see what happened. It was going to take something special for them to come back.
Nakase provided just that. She pulled All-Star Gabby Williams for an extended stretch in the third quarter, personally coaching her on the bench and helping her to reset. Williams scored two points before that rest, and 17 points after, looking fresh and playing harder than her Dallas counterparts. Her defense swallowed up Paige Bueckers all night.
Williams wasn't the only Valkyrie playing hard. Nakase had the entire team at full intensity throughout the third quarter comeback and fourth quarter battle. She struck the right balance with the closing lineup she deployed, shortening her bench without exhausting her players. She called multiple plays to target weak spots in the Dallas defense.
And while most of what a coach does has to be executed by the players, one thing she controls fully are coaching challenges. Twice she used challenges to gain possession for the Valkyries, winning both. That included her challenge with 13.1 seconds left, claiming (rightly) that Williams did indeed establish herself inbounds before recovering a loose ball, flipping a turnover into Valkyries possession in a one-point game.
It was a coaching master class from Nakase, who left it all on the court Friday night.
Jose Fernandez had a rough debut
Jose Fernandez deserves all kinds of credit for transforming the Wings into a playoff team built around Paige Bueckers. Arike Ogunbawale was effusive in her praise of Fernandez after the game. He has a bright future ahead of him in the WNBA after a long and successful college coaching career.
In Game 3, however, he was outcoached.
Fernandez had a cheat code in Ogunbawale, who scored 45 points in Game 2 and followed it up with another 30 in Game 3. The Valkyries could not stop her so much as try to contain her. Their best approach down the stretch was to deny her the ball -- and the Wings had no answer for it. On multiple possessions late in the game, Ogunbawale never touched the ball. Fernandez did not have a play call to spring her free.
The Wings obviously deserve credit for putting together a 20-0 run spanning halftime to stake out such a large lead, but they couldn't hang onto that lead. The Valkyries played harder, they dominated the offensive glass, and when it mattered most, their key players got the shots that they wanted, while Dallas was left throwing up late-clock contested shots and hoping they went in.
Fernandez has plenty to learn from his first playoff series.
Nakase now faces the master
Natalie Nakase will not have the coaching advantage heading into the second round, however. Once an assistant on Becky Hammon's staff in Las Vegas, Nakase will now need to upset her old master with the Valkyries taking on the defending champion Aces.
That is no easy task. Hammon has won three titles in four years as head coach of the Aces. She is a brilliant tactical mind who learned from the best in Gregg Popovich on how to manage a team both in-game and throughout a season. She taught Nakase most of what she knows.
The Valkyries are hungry, however, and Nakase knows how to feed that hunger. Her team is a defensive chainsaw ready to eat up a thin Aces team. Slowing down the likes of A'ja Wilson and Jackie Young will certainly not be easy, but Golden State has the players and the scheme to do it.
It will be the biggest test of Natalie Nakase's career. She dominated the coaching battle in Game 3; can she do it again?
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