Joe Lacob predicted a Valkyries title within five years. Here's how they reached the WNBA Finals in just two

Lacob made a bold proclamation when introducing the WNBA's newest franchise, and things have come together even faster than he envisioned

Oct 16, 2026 at 11:20 am ET • 5 min read

SAN FRANCISCO -- Three years ago, during a press conference to officially introduce the Golden State Valkyries as the WNBA's first expansion franchise since 2008, Joe Lacob took the microphone and gave the rest of the league a warning. 

"First press conference with the Warriors, I said we will win a championship in the first five years," said Lacob, who has owned the NBA's Golden State Warriors since 2010 and paid a then-record-setting $50 million expansion fee for the Valkyries in 2023. "I'm telling you right now, we will win a WNBA championship in the first five years of this franchise."

At that point, the Valkyries were little more than an idea. They were seven months away from hiring Ohemaa Nyanin as their general manager, a year away from hiring Natalie Nakase as their coach and 14 months away from having any players on their roster. 

Lacob's success in turning the Warriors into one of the premier franchises in all of sports made it hard to completely write off his proclamation. The Warriors had won 29 and 26 games, respectively, in the two seasons before he bought the team. Five years later, they won their first championship since 1975, and have since added four more titles in the Steph Curry era. 

Still, few outside of the Bay Area thought the Valkyries, who will host Game 1 of the WNBA Finals against the Atlanta Dream on Saturday, would actually follow suit. And even the most strident believers, including Lacob himself, never imagined they could do so as soon as their second season.

"It's just a perfect confluence of events and people and experience and timing. It's just a lot of things that have all come together at the right time," Lacob said this week. "I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I am shocked by this, I'm not. I think all the ingredients were there and I made that prediction knowingly and understood what I was saying. Now to do it in two years, no one could sit here and tell you that would be something they would predict. No one, not even me."

How Lacob's boldness set a standard for the Valkyries

Lacob's boldness may have set him and the franchise up for possible ridicule down the line, but it also established high standards and a competitive culture. 

During Nakase's introductory press conference after her 2024 hiring, she recounted her first conversation with Lacob. 

"Like the first 10-15 minutes, he's just telling me, 'I'm about achieving goals,'" Nakase said. "And he's like, 'What I do is I set my goal really, really, really high, and then I create a plan and then I work obsessively toward that plan, over and over again until I get that goal.'" 

Nakase was so fired up by Lacob's passion and enthusiasm that she pounded her fist on a restaurant table and told him, "Hell yeah, we're gonna win a championship." 

"I just like the challenge that he wants to be No. 1," Nakase added back in 2024. "That's what sports is about. That's the beauty of sports, is that you want to be No. 1. You want to be a champion. No one goes back and is like, 'Well, in five years, I want to be No. 2.' Nobody remembers second place. Everyone remembers the champion, so that's what drives me."

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There has never been even a single day in which vying for a lottery pick, as most expansion franchises do, has ever been acceptable in the Bay Area. 

"Winning is the foundation of this organization and the Golden State WNBA team's staff will have that same spirit," Nyanin said when she was hired to lead the organization's basketball side in 2024. "Why not us? It will be us ... To have all the high expectations, all the pressure. Give it to us in the most authentic way and we will be sure to meet you at the top."

Last season, the Valkyries set a record for wins by an expansion team (23) and became the first expansion team to make the playoffs in its inaugural season. And though the Valkyries were a first-round exit, the way they went about things was attractive to other players. 

That included Gabby Williams, the team's key offseason free-agent signing, who told reporters this week that she was impressed by "playing in [Chase Center] last year and watching them from afar." Williams spent the previous two seasons in Seattle on a Storm team with far more individual talent than the Valkyries, but never got past the first round. 

"Just realizing how far culture gets you, that's what made me interested to see what is this formula," Williams said. "And then when I had my free agency meeting, I was like, 'Oh, I get it.' ... I believed in it from the beginning and I said it from the day that I got here that I believed this was a team that could contend." 

Williams, selected at No. 4 by the Chicago Sky back in 2018, is the only lottery pick on the Valkyries' roster, which makes their initial success all the more impressive. Lacob wanted a championship team, but he empowered Nyanin to build it her way, rather than demanding that she chase stars and throw money around in free agency. 

In a call with reporters this week, Nyanin called Lacob her "favorite boss" and said he has let her and Nakase "lead with our heart and lead with strategy and our experiences." 

Kiah Stokes, who also signed with the Valkyries in free agency after winning three championships in four seasons with the Las Vegas Aces, said this week that Golden State's success shows what you can achieve "with a clear vision of what you want and the identity that you want." 

"Shoutout to the Valkyries organization, because they had this vision from the start, and to be able to see it come to fruition already in year two is pretty amazing and pretty special," Stokes said. "We have a great group, it's really special, and we're looking forward to the Finals."