Natalie Nakase’s unlikely journey: a 5-foot-2 walk-on, coach in Japan, and now in the WNBA Finals‎

Every step of her basketball journey, there was a logical reason why Natalie Nakase was unlikely to get a shot. At 5-foot-2, she didn’t have the profile (even as a walk-on) to play at UCLA. She played professionally in the shadows, competing for unheralded teams like the San Jose Spiders and San Diego Siege in the short-lived and now-defunct National Women’s Basketball League. From there, she coached in largely unrecognized outposts, like leading the Saitama Broncos in Japan or the Wolfenbüttel