When Gabby Williams looked over at her head coach Natalie Nakase and teammate Kiah Stokes moments after showering each other with champagne, the 2026 WNBA Finals MVP looked confused.

Before the trio began their press conference after winning this year’s WNBA title, Williams noticed both Nakase and Stokes had their championship hats on backwards while Williams had hers on forwards, her big ski goggles perched on the bill.

“You guys have done this before,” Williams said, taking off her hat to switch it around. “You put your hats backwards. I’ve never done this before. So that’s how you’re supposed to do it?”

Stokes had a quick response.

“Welcome to the game,” she said.

This was just the latest example of the slew of lessons Nakase had poured into Williams ever since the player and coach began working together this back in April.

Both Nakase and Stokes had been in epic American sports celebrations before — the two won back-to-back titles with the Las Vegas Aces in 2022 and 2023 — while Williams was new and she wasn’t afraid to say it.

Williams was also new to being a WNBA team’s No. 1 option and to leading a team that was built around her. This was a challenge that she said she wanted and she was able to put her trust into Nakase, someone who shares similar experiences of being underestimated.

Nakase’s vision for Williams was to allow her to play with the most freedom she’d ever had in her career, while also giving her the tools she needed to lead in some of the most pivotal moments. This all transpired during the 7-game-slug-it-out series against the Atlanta Dream.

After the Valkyries had lost Game 3 by 26 points on the Dream’s home court, Williams was spotted giving an impassioned speech to the Valkyries’ huddle once the buzzer sounded.

Williams said she thought she wasn’t stepping up properly for her team. At that point, her on-court play had shown that as well. Williams shot under 30% in both Finals Games 2 and 3, and didn’t look like herself after a Game 1 collision with Dream’s Jordin Canada.

After Game 3, Williams spoke about how she needed to adjust her mindset and that speech in the huddle was just the beginning of that switch.

“I’ve been a little bit too loose as a leader,” she said.

With Williams presumably not at 100% health wise, how was she able to go beast mode in that final 20 minutes of Game 7 to win a title and claim Finals MVP? It all came back to Williams’ trust in Nakase.

“Nat told me to stay patient,” Williams said. “I trust her with my life. I stayed patient. I trusted her. She said, ‘Stay patient, stay patient. The game is going to open up for you.’ It did. It’s what we did all year: just trust each other.”

Williams had to trust that Nakase making the tactical adjustment for Williams to guard the Dream’s Naz Hillmon and function as a roamer was the right move. Williams also had to trust Nakase and her staff that their intention to start Williams without the ball in her hands was going to pay off. Being that No. 1 option and having freedom as a player came with the responsibility of being in-lock step with Nakse and her staff.

Valkyries’ assistant coach Kasib Powell told Clutch Points that the plan was to use Williams as an off-ball facilitator “until the moment was right.”

“When we got a little bit stagnant, and we weren’t scoring, we [were] like, ‘now’s the time,’” Powell said. “And she was ready for it. She stepped up to it.”

These were the valuable lessons that Williams embraced on her way to one of the most career defining second half performances in a WNBA Finals clincher. She scored 28 points in the final 20 minutes of Game 7 and drilled four threes, shooting 66.7% from deep.

This is a player who averaged just under one three-pointer per game when she was a rookie back in 2018, and now many years later is being compared to all-time great NBA shooter and Golden State legend Stephen Curry.

To be clear, Williams and Curry are very different players with different strengths although they led their teams to the same result: a championship. It’s just like how the NBA and WNBA are very different leagues that command different types of fanbases that have produced the same result: both are successful basketball businesses.

The lessons that the rest of the WNBA learns from Williams, Nakase and the Golden State Valkyries is that to win a title in this league, having an identity matters. To win a title in the modern WNBA, defense matters a lot too. Offenses are spaced out, but teams who are disciplined defensively and have the proper personnel to defend at a high level can always give themselves a shot. The Valkyries’ identity more often than not gave them a fighting chance in any battle.

Talented teams have winners but not all talented teams are winners, and that’s what the Valkyries have proven.

“I’m not one to sit and smell the roses but this one is a little hard not to,” team owner Joe Lacob said after his team won the title. “I’m a startup guy by training for 30 years in technology companies and venture capital. The whole thing of a startup to me is so exciting and when you have one go as well as this one’s gone, that’s just a great feeling.”

And while Lacob can rightfully toot his own horn, the Valkyries aren’t your average startup. This team was very low risk and incredibly high reward. The Valkyries were born in a business culture when women’s basketball had broken through into broader American life. The WNBA under the Cathy Engelbert era finally had enough data points behind it to prove that return on investment was a guarantee not a risk. This is not a privilege that the majority of WNBA teams have had throughout the league’s history.

The Bay Area, a place where many progressive, artistic and innovative people live, had been chomping at the bit for a WNBA team after the closest fans of Stanford women’s basketball had to see women’s pro ball was in Los Angeles.

The potential was always there for the team that would go on to become the Valkyries, now the fastest professional sports team to win a title. They accomplished the mountain top goal for any pro sports team in just their second year of existence.

The potential was always there for Williams too, a two-way player who always had multiple suitors during periods of free agency because of how her skills suit modern basketball.

Williams and Valkyries proved to all the naysayers that all of the hard work would pay off and that having belief in a basketball formula that hadn’t been yet proven around the WNBA was exactly the point. A team full of versatile wings led by the most talented versatile wing could win a championship. That basketball philosophy was high risk but turned out to be high reward — a true San Francisco start-up.

Less than two months ago, Williams was defeated by the Breanna Stewart-led Team USA during the 2026 FIBA World Cup in Berlin, Germany. Williams had experienced crushing defeat in two straight international competitions for the French national team dating back to the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Back in September, Nakase was an assistant coach for Team USA that came out with the victory. Angel Reese picked up the 5’2” coach off the ground celebrating the victory.

Now, 48 days later with Reese on the opposite side, it was Williams’ turn to lift Nakase off the ground. She did so with both of them standing as champions who made history.

Less than two months later, Williams could feel what had been chasing for so long in the WNBA. The impassivity from Williams was gone. She could let her guard down in the arms of her head coach Nakase whose vision for her had come true when it mattered the most.