Natalie Williams on the court docket of Michelob Extremely Enviornment, the place he's common supervisor of the Las Vegas Aces WNBA crew. After an excellent four-year school profession at UCLA, Williams spent a decade enjoying skilled basketball. David Jay Becker for the Deseret Information
WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces Normal Supervisor Natalie Williams on the crew’s court docket on the Michelob Extremely Enviornment on Thursday, Aug. 11, 2022 in Las Vegas. David Jay Becker for the Deseret Information
WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces Normal Supervisor Natalie Williams had by no means labored in a entrance workplace earlier than becoming a member of the Las Vegas Aces earlier this yr. David Jay Becker for the Deseret Information
The best way Natalie Williams tells it, the concept got here from Holly Rowe. The previous BYU pupil and College of Utah alum had already been working with the Utah Jazz as a broadcast analyst — along with her sideline reporter duties for ESPN’s marquee school soccer crew — when she reached out to Williams with a chance. She was recruiting a crew of ladies to change into the primary all-female broadcast unit in Jazz historical past. She’d additionally reached out to Krista Blunk, a Pac-12 Community and ESPN sports activities analyst who, like Rowe and Williams, is from Utah. However Williams differed from each Rowe and Blunk in an important method: She’d by no means accomplished any broadcast work earlier than.
That made little distinction to Rowe, who figured Williams’ basketball bona fides made her a no brainer regardless. She was, in any case, a four-time WNBA All-Star and three-time all-WNBA first-team choice; an Olympic gold medalist and a Corridor of Famer. To not point out her deep Utah roots. She grew up in Taylorsville and graduated from Taylorsville Excessive College, and he or she performed for the WNBA franchise previously often called the Utah Starzz. She lived in Utah till earlier this yr, managing a program known as the Natalie Williams Basketball Academy that, by Williams’ estimates, has helped nudge about 65 younger girls into school basketball. She as soon as owned a sports activities bar on the town, too, and was one of many torchbearers forward of the 2002 Salt Lake Olympic Video games. Nonetheless, broadcasting? Williams knew lots about basketball and about Utah, however she didn’t know a factor about tv manufacturing.
WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces Normal Supervisor Natalie Williams on the crew’s court docket on the Michelob Extremely Enviornment on Thursday, Aug. 11, 2022 in Las Vegas.
David Jay Becker for the Deseret Information
However, she mentioned sure. She at all times says sure. She’s realized to say sure and embrace the unfamiliar time and time once more throughout her lengthy and assorted profession within the orbit of basketball. For this explicit alternative, that meant learning gamers from the Jazz and the visiting Los Angeles Clippers, studying enjoyable details or particular abilities that may present viewers with unknown insights. It meant learning when she, as a shade commentator, was supposed to speak vs. the play-by-play particular person. She credit Rowe and the remainder of the crew for serving to carry her in control, however don’t you dare recommend she was nervous. Natalie Williams doesn’t get nervous. She’s realized to channel nervousness into preparation, and preparation into the hope and perception that no matter new alternative she takes on will work out. “Fortunately, I deal with challenges nicely,” she explains. “I sort of like the joy of being beneath strain.”
On March 18, that angle served her nicely through the all-women Jazz broadcast. However forward of the brand new NBA season starting on October 19, Williams doesn’t — for the second, at the least — have plans to reprise that function. Her focus is required elsewhere, with the prospect to tackle one other new, much more complicated alternative.
Williams’ dedication to seizing alternative is probably greatest understood by means of the lens of failure. To be clear, Williams hasn’t failed a lot; even again in her school days, she was a standout two-sport athlete at UCLA — the primary girl to ever earn All-America honors in each basketball and volleyball in the identical season. She led the Bruins to NCAA volleyball titles in 1990 and 1991, and he or she was acknowledged as the most effective collegiate volleyball participant within the nation. Which is why after graduating from UCLA in 1994, she set a purpose of constructing the 1996 Olympic girls’s volleyball crew.
She educated for years, enduring morning practices at San Diego’s Balboa Park till the video games have been simply three months away. That’s when she bought a name telling her that coach Terry Liskevych wished to talk together with her earlier than apply. She walked into his workplace round 7 a.m., figuring out that the information doubtless wasn’t good. “Sadly,” he advised her, “we’re going to be slicing you.” Even now, Williams calls that second “heartbreaking.” Reasonably than search for a brand new alternative, although, she dove into one which was previous and new without delay: basketball. That very same yr, she made the Staff USA roster for the Taiwan-hosted Jones Cup, which put her on the Olympic radar as soon as extra. That wasn’t within the entrance of her thoughts on the time, however after she led Staff USA in rebounds and ranked fourth in scoring, the dream of an Olympic berth began to take form as soon as extra. “I might need a shot at this,” she advised herself.
Over the subsequent few years, she embraced an outlook of positivity — particularly in regard to getting alongside together with her teammates. “Whenever you journey with the crew, and also you’re going everywhere in the world, there’s at all times loopy issues that occur the place issues don’t at all times go your method,” she says. “And to at all times be the person who makes the most effective of conditions, that’s what I’ve at all times realized. … Attempt to consider an answer as an alternative of including to a battle. There’s no use in complaining about one thing that’s out of your management. Simply make the most effective of it, and determine a option to make issues higher.” That individual lesson is one she’s tried to impart to her 4 youngsters, and one which served her nicely when she ultimately did make Staff USA and headed to Sydney, Australia, for the 2000 Olympics. With 7.6 factors and 5.9 rebounds per sport, Williams ranked fourth and third on the crew, respectively, whereas coming off the bench for a squad that included different established greats like Lisa Leslie and Sheryl Swoopes.
“You by no means know the struggles and the battles that everyone goes by means of daily. So I’m simply making an attempt to keep watch over everybody and ensure they really feel supported
Sadly, Williams’ WNBA profession was comparatively brief given her late begin. The pounding from enjoying two sports activities for a big portion of her life caught up together with her. “My physique let me know,” she explains of deciding to retire from the WNBA after the 2005 season. She wanted ice baths after each sport, after each apply. As soon as she realized that — and determined she wished to have the ability to stroll when she reached her 50s — she stepped away and thus encountered essentially the most difficult query of her skilled life: What’s subsequent?
“Whenever you depart a company just like the WNBA and USA Basketball, and also you’re not round superb friends and other people,” she says, “and also you simply don’t know what you’re going to do in life subsequent as a occupation — I imply, I feel that’s the most important and most difficult factor.” It’s a actuality for nearly all athletes, nevertheless it’s particularly acute for veterans of the WNBA; in contrast to former NFL or NBA gamers, there aren't any pensions and comparatively few retirement advantages. Williams selected to strive teaching different younger girls, which she did for over a decade, culminating within the Society of Well being and Bodily Educators naming her its 2020 recipient of the Guiding Lady in Sports activities Award.
A yr later, in the summertime of 2021, she headed to Las Vegas, the place the Aces deliberate to honor the franchise’s alumni (the Las Vegas Aces franchise was the San Antonio Stars, which was the Starzz, which is why Williams was included regardless of by no means having performed for the Aces). “At the moment,” she admits, “I didn’t understand that I used to be in an interview course of.”
This time, reasonably than Rowe, the impetus was Nikki Fargas. The previous head coach of Louisiana State’s girls’s basketball program had lately been employed by Aces proprietor Mark Davis as crew president. She occurred to start out a dialog through the alumni celebration with Williams, who occurred to say how she hoped to get again into the WNBA some day. Their chat ended there, and over the subsequent few months, Fargas managed to make a giant splash together with her new crew: She lured Becky Hammon, a former WNBA All-Star who in 2014 turned the primary girl to tackle a full-time assistant coach place within the NBA, away from Gregg Popovich and the San Antonio Spurs, naming her head coach of the Aces in December. She wasn’t accomplished.
Across the similar time Williams was making ready to make her broadcasting debut, she bought a name from Fargas. “We'd like to ask,” Williams remembers Fargas telling her, “in case you could be concerned with being our common supervisor.” Williams couldn’t imagine her luck. She’d been hoping for a change — “You already know when you might have that feeling in life the place you are feeling such as you’re prepared for one thing new?” she explains — however this one wouldn’t come simply. Taking over the function of common supervisor — which on this explicit case encompasses operating the day-to-day operations of the crew, from coordinating media appearances to negotiating contracts to resolving teaching wants and participant disputes — would imply as soon as once more embracing one thing fully new; Williams had by no means labored in a entrance workplace earlier than. It could additionally imply shifting her fast household from Salt Lake Metropolis to Las Vegas, whereas leaving a lot of her prolonged household behind. “It was simply overwhelming for me at first,” she admits.
WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces Normal Supervisor Natalie Williams had by no means labored in a entrance workplace earlier than becoming a member of the Las Vegas Aces earlier this yr.
David Jay Becker for the Deseret Information
She took a weekend to consider the provide, then known as Fargas again on Monday together with her choice. On April 8, the Aces introduced her as their new GM. After we spoke in late July, she’d been on the job for simply over three months and had only recently began to really feel comfy. At first, it was an “data overload,” she says. However the extra she’s listened to and noticed Fargas and others, the extra she’s caught on, and the extra assured she’s grown. She is aware of she’ll nonetheless have lots to study in regards to the offseason, however for now, she’s feeling optimistic. The Aces completed the 2022 common season tied with the defending champion Chicago Sky for the most effective document within the WNBA and superior to the WNBA Finals, the place they defeated the Connecticut Solar in 4 video games. Williams has re-signed standout guards Chelsea Grey and Kelsey Plum. And, as with each different new problem, she’s making an attempt to remain optimistic and cross that angle on. “I attempt to see how persons are feeling, see how they’re doing,” she says. “You by no means know the struggles and the battles that everyone goes by means of daily. So I’m simply making an attempt to keep watch over everybody and ensure they really feel supported and at all times know that I’m there for them in the event that they want me.”
Again when she was making an attempt to make Staff USA, Williams targeted greater than something on changing into an elite rebounder. “That’s sort of my declare to fame,” she says with a tinge of delight, all these years later. “Folks would say Natalie Williams was a tremendous rebounder — in all probability among the finest ever within the historical past of ladies’s basketball.” She knew that’s how she may most add worth to her crew, so she cultivated that ability. Labored on it day by day. These days, that lesson nonetheless serves her nicely, however rebounding has been changed with networking. Along with her gamers. Along with her coaches. With others within the business. That person-first angle, she believes, is how she bought this job. “So many alternatives in life come from who ,” she explains. “And simply ensuring that you're treating individuals the suitable method and are an awesome particular person.”
She tries to maintain that relentless angle in thoughts as a common supervisor — in addition to in embracing no matter alternatives may come her method subsequent.
This story seems within the October . .