Warriors CEO Joe Lacob, an accomplished selector of leaders, was the last stop in the process. The final level for who would become the head basketball honcho of Golden State’s new WNBA franchise.
But the venture capitalist turned four-time NBA championship owner doesn’t care about name recognition for this process. He wants stars on the court. But for organizational leadership, he likes developing stars. And he believes he’s found one, plucked from the New York Liberty’s front office.
Ohemaa Nyanin will be hired as the general manager to oversee all basketball operations for the Golden State’s WNBA team. She will be introduced today at Chase Center.
“Ohemaa really spoke to me,” Lacob said in a phone interview. “She has a very nice personality, in terms of interacting with people, and particularly with me. I resonated very much with her life story. She’s very bright, very intelligent. I think she’s speaks four languages. She’s lived in multiple parts of the world. … I think she really, truly believes in what she’s doing.”
For the last decade or so, Nyanin has spent her time in basketball behind the scenes. She’s prided herself on being instrumental in the shadows. Servant leadership, she calls it.
Now, she’s out front. The face of a sparkling new front office. She’s equipped with the resources and the expectations of the Warriors. She lands in a region fanatical about women’s hoops at a time when the game is reaching new heights. She gets to build a team under the roof of a modern dynasty. She has accepted the championship standard.
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“I think the clarity in the vision is a blessing to be quite honest,” Nyanin said in a phone interview. “The pressure is a different type of blessing, I would say. But what’s really exciting is that Mr. Lacob is an owner who has had a long tenure in the business of basketball. … So I know he did this really understanding how to build this to be a long lasting, sustainable winning franchise. … So I’m excited. I know the entire organization has both hands and both feet in to make sure that this is the most successful franchise it can be. And I’m just super honored that they see me as a person that can be a part of the growth of this team within the league.”
Nyanin spent the last five seasons with the New York Liberty. She rose through the ranks quickly in one of the WNBA’s premier franchises, from manager of basketball operations to director to assistant general manager under Jonathan Kolb, the reigning WNBA Executive of the Year. Nyanin was instrumental in helping the Liberty land superstars Breanna Stewart, Jonquel Jones and Courtney Vandersloot.
Nyanin also has extensive experience with women’s basketball internationally. Before joining the Liberty, she spent five years as assistant director of USA Basketball women’s national team, including the youth teams that help develop the future stars. She also served as technical delegate and manager for the FIBA Amercas World Cup Qualifier.
Part of what appealed to the Warriors is Nyanin’s wide reach in the basketball world. She knows players coming through the pipelines as well as current players who’ve gone through them, vital when building a roster from scratch. Expertise in the women’s game was a priority.
“I think that’s important because she understands who all these young women are,” Lacob said. “The ones coming up over the next number of years, she’s met them all. She knows who they all are as people. She has a good sense for who is the right kind of person that’d we want to back — not only as a player but as a person and culturally for organization to build on.”
What landed Nyanin in the big chair, in the newest venture by one of the NBA’s modern behemoths, was her own star potential.
The final three candidates spent time with executives from the Warriors and WNBA Golden State, including Lacob. The final decision was made after spending time at Lacob’s house with other integral figures. Lacob wanted to see how she meshed with everyone. Another priority was identifying a leader of the franchise who could fit into and add to the Warriors’ culture. For the WNBA franchise, Lacob wants the same all-hands-on-deck environment the NBA team employs — which requires managing up and down, empowering staffers at every level and handling the expectations from the top.
That’s why the chemistry component is important. Lacob is all in with the WNBA team. So he has to feel good about the person running the franchise. Which is why Nyanin is here. The sense he got when he chose Bob Myers (an agent at the time) to be the Warriors GM, and Rick Welts to be his team president, and Mark Jackson and Steve Kerr to be his head coach though neither had head coaching experience — that’s the sense he gets from Nyanin.
“I think there are three key people that we need to get right,” Lacob said. “One is the business side, the team president. The general manager, the architect of the team? The third, of course, will be the coach. We have to get those three people right. And, look, I have a pretty good track record with this. I don’t always go with the big game or the most experience from another team. I tend to go with someone who has it — whatever that is. Maybe that’s an instinctive thing.”
(Photo: Noah Graham / NBAE via Getty Images))
