Good morning! Blue Origin’s flight takes off, married girls may very well be disenfranchised by new laws, and there is energy in ranging from scratch within the WNBA.
– Contemporary begin. The 2025 WNBA draft is right this moment, and selecting gamers for the primary time in a collegiate draft would be the Golden State Valkyries, the brand new growth group beginning play this season. It is one of many solely issues the Valkyries are doing historically. The Bay Space-based group bought 10,000 season tickets—the primary group within the league to take action. They signed a multi-year cope with Sephora, together with naming rights for the group’s Oakland follow middle, which can characteristic Sephora branding and merchandise all through its courts, locker room, and participant lounge.
It has been each tougher and simpler to realize these milestones as a group constructing from scratch—the primary to take action since 2008.
Valkyries GM Ohemaa Nyanin has seen the distinction between a rebuild and a recent begin in motion; she got here to the Valkyries from the New York Liberty, an unique WNBA franchise that was rescued from a near-death in 2019. “Recreating ‘What is Liberty basketball now?’ was really hard because people just wanted to see what they knew,” she says. “The difference here is we are creating what we want people to know. What is Valkyries basketball? We’re taking our sweet time to define that, because once you define it—coming from experience—it’s really hard to change it.”
Relatively than focusing solely on basketball or enterprise abilities in hiring, Nyanin says her prime priorities have been discovering individuals with an entrepreneurial mindset and aptitude for problem-solving—though these abilities have some overlap with the grit required in sports activities. “To be an entrepreneur is to create, to either thrive or fail, and regardless of the results, continue,” she says.
On the enterprise facet, president Jess Smith has been pondering equally creatively (see: that Sephora deal, plus one other new one with United Airways). Final 12 months, she advised me she was interested by how the group will be larger than basketball. Earlier than the group had gamers, it had violet t-shirts and a partnership with the sports activities media model Togethxr. Smith was contemplating a podcast. “What do those moments feel like when our brand is bigger than sport?” Smith stated.
The Valkyries drafted most of their roster via an growth draft in December, and with right this moment’s collegiate draft (that includes projected No. 1 draft decide Paige Bueckers, who is predicted to go to the Dallas Wings) will fill out the group. And so they have not needed to construct all the pieces from zero—the group has the identical homeowners because the NBA’s Golden State Warriors.
Nyanin and Valkyries coach Natalie Nakase know what they do not need to replicate: “treating athletes as just athletes,” and never full individuals, is the worst behavior they’ve seen elsewhere, Nyanin says.
“We can write our own story now, right?” Nyanin says. “We don’t have to inherit anything.”
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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This story was initially featured on Fortune.com
