Rarely in sports does a person have carte blanche to start a team from scratch. But that’s just the position Golden State Valkyries general manager Ohemaa Nyanin is in.
The Valkyries, who are set to join the WNBA for their inaugural season in 2025, have no coach and no players. The league hasn’t announced rules for the upcoming expansion draft or how it will otherwise fold Golden State into the mix.
Nyanin is tasked with sorting through it all. Since the Valkyries hired her in May, they have eclipsed 15,000 season ticket deposits, named Vanja Cernevic as Nyanin’s No. 2, announced JP Morgan Chase as their jersey patch sponsor and released renderings of their plans for facilities at the Chase Center and at their practice gym in Oakland.
Nyanin has had a hand in it all, but her biggest tasks ahead remain. How she’ll approach them is largely a mystery. Her basketball philosophy provides hints at how she’ll approach running the Bay Area’s first WNBA team.
“It’s as open and kind of as broad as it can be,” Nyanin said, reflecting the malleability required for her nebulous position.
With the 2024 WNBA postseason beginning Sunday, the time for Nyanin to make her mark is fast approaching. She’ll have tangible variables to deal with soon.
Nyanin has done several interviews since the Valkyries announced her hiring, but rarely has she talked openly about the way she sees basketball. Discussing her vision isn’t easy; everything is hypothetical, and executives like her typically don’t like to telegraph their plans anyway.
Because the “options are endless,” Nyanin said, the general manager makes an effort to avoid possibly alienating future Valkyries.
But Nyanin, who spent part of the summer picking the brains of Warriors front office officials at Las Vegas Summer League, does have some preferences. For instance, when asked about the way she sees the game, her mind quickly moved to defense.
Building a top defense, Nyanin said, is the quickest path to winning in the WNBA. A top-three defense is “a goal,” she said.
This year, the five WNBA teams with the best regular-season record finished with the league’s five best defensive ratings. The Liberty, Nyanin’s former club, wrapped up the top overall playoff seed with the third-ranked defense.
Nyanin knows there are lots of ways to build a championship defense, though.
Much of crafting a defense depends on personnel. But some core principles transcend roster: transition defense and versatility.
On the latter, Nyanin leans toward having a roster, and coaching staff, comfortable toggling through different schemes.
“It kind of depends on the night and what the matchups are,” Nyanin said. “So the versatility of your roster, to be able to adapt to the other team’s roster is what I’m most focused on. And to be able to kind of guard any team the way in which would be the most successful. Chicago, your defensive scheme is going to be completely different than it is for Vegas, which is very different from New York. I don’t want to say, ‘I’m just going to clog the paint’ because that might not make sense for, say, an Indy.”
Thriving in different schemes requires having a head coach who can teach and adjust on the fly.
“Having a coach that is convicted in a system, but isn’t afraid to kind of go outside of their own ideals and philosophies is really really important,” Nyanin said.
Nyanin said she’s “pretty close” to hiring a coach. She said she was surprised at how much interest there was in the position during the hiring process; many candidates threw their hat in the ring in addition to the people Nyanin planned on interviewing at the outset.
The general manager is cautious about how many basketball opinions she shares because she wants the head coach to have autonomy and a chance to foster their own locker room environment. But she does have some requirements for the job.
“I think the head coach needs to have a sense of purpose,” Nyanin said. “They need to have the ability to bring people together. Our athletes must want to play for this person as much as they want to play for themselves and reach their goals. Our head coach needs to be able to present themselves to the community in a way in which the community can kind of understand — the Bay, more specifically — what their philosophies are.”
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A former American University walk-on (and, later, the director of basketball operations there), Nyanin’s playing experience may help inform what qualities she seeks in a coach. She values a competitive spirit and a leader who can “galvanize” the team. The Valkyries have lofty goals; in his first press conference as Valkyries owner, Joe Lacob said the goal is to win a championship in its first five years.
“Like, no excuses,” Nyanin said. “We are here, first and foremost as humans, and secondly to win basketball games. So how do we do that, and how do we do that in the most inclusive way?”
Just as coaches have different styles, executives approach the job differently. Pat Riley and Daryl Morey don’t go about their roles the same way. Farhan Zaidi and Dave Dombrowski aren’t exactly kindred spirits.
In Golden State, Nyanin has a clear sense of how she wants to run things — which she established in the extensive interview process with Lacob and other stakeholders.
Nyanin has never been a general manager before, but she learned under Jonathan Kolb, the head of basketball operations with the Liberty. Nyanin was Kolb’s first hire when he took the job in 2019, and they helped bring the Liberty from bottom-feeder to perennial power.
Kolb, the 2023 executive of the year, accelerated New York’s rebuild by signing Jonquel Jones, Courtney Vandersloot and Breanna Stewart in a three-week span.
As the Liberty became a juggernaut, Nyanin took notes. She saw how Kolb navigated tough conversations, how he made training camp a positive experience for players — even those who didn’t make the team — and how he built a culture.
Kolb, Nyanin said, was successful without strong-arming players. With the Valkyries, Nyanin aims to emulate that.
“I want to approach the job with as much empathy as possible,” Nyanin said. “I think that it’s really hard to have hard conversations with athletes about their growth or lack of growth within a particular season or a portion of a season. So I really want to make sure I’m human-centered in my approach. I also want to make sure that there is a place for our athletes to authentically share their voice. And it can be done in so many different ways. I don’t want to be a GM that is feared.”
