Golden State Valkyries fans, grab your coffee and get ready to watch your team try to win its first WNBA championship. Just make sure you have nothing important scheduled for Thursday morning.
Game 6 of the WNBA Finals between the Valkyries and Atlanta Dream tips off at 12:30 p.m. EDT, or 9:30 a.m. PDT, at State Farm Arena in Atlanta. The Valkyries are one win away from their first championship, but fans on the West Coast will have to squeeze a potential title celebration into the middle of a workday.
The game was originally scheduled for 8 p.m. EDT, giving fans a chance to watch in prime time. Instead, the WNBA moved the game to accommodate the Atlanta Hawks, who also play at State Farm Arena on Thursday night.
It’s definitely a messy situation for a league that’s been working so hard to ride the huge wave of women’s basketball popularity. It’s also not a great look for the Dream or the NBA, given their close ties and shared responsibility for pushing the game forward.
An early-season NBA game gets primetime while a WNBA Finals game that could decide the championship gets shoved to the morning? Makes total sense.
How did we get here?
The scheduling issues started before the Finals even began. The championship series began Oct. 17 following an eight-day gap between the end of the scheduled semifinal window.
The Finals themselves have brought more scheduling complications. Game 3 was moved from Oct. 22 to Oct. 21 to avoid a concert at State Farm Arena. Game 4 was then moved to a 1 p.m. EDT tipoff on Saturday, Oct. 24, to accommodate the Hawks’ season opener against the Houston Rockets that evening. The Hawks pushed their start time back to 8:30 p.m. EDT.
The Dream normally play at Gateway Center Arena, which holds about 3,500 fans. State Farm Arena can accommodate roughly 17,000 and has provided a much bigger stage for Atlanta’s postseason run. Games 3 and 4 sold out at the larger venue.
The WNBA announced Monday that Game 6 would also be played at State Farm Arena, but the only way to make the schedule work with the Hawks’ game against the Cleveland Cavaliers was to move tipoff to 12:30 p.m. EDT. The Hawks adjusted their start time to 8 p.m.
The Dream’s ownership group said it had raised concerns about the scheduling conflict with the league two months earlier.
In an open letter to fans, Dream owners Larry and Robyn Gottesdiener, Suzanne Abair, and Renee Montgomery said their concerns didn’t receive the attention or urgency they deserved.
“Playing a midday game on a Thursday is not what we would have chosen and not what we fought for,” the ownership group wrote.
It’s a puzzling situation. The Dream grabbed the No. 4 seed, and trading for young star Angel Reese really made them look like legit contenders. But somehow, it seems nobody in Atlanta actually expected them to go on a deep playoff run.
The team will move all its home games to State Farm Arena beginning in 2027, which should help prevent similar conflicts in the future.
Players and fans are making the best of it
The players have largely tried to keep the focus on basketball.
After Game 5, which Golden State won 64-55 to take a 3-2 series lead, Valkyries guard Veronica Burton encouraged fans to find a way to watch.
“Call in sick,” Burton said.
Teammate Kiah Stokes offered a similar suggestion, joking that fans could fake a cough.
Dream star Allisha Gray also made clear that the unusual start time would not distract Atlanta from the task at hand.
“I don’t care playing at 8 a.m., 1 p.m., midnight,” Gray said. “We got a championship to win.”
But the frustration goes beyond the players. The league is asking fans to rearrange their workdays for a game that could determine a champion, with only a few days’ notice.
Rapper Flavor Flav took the situation into his own hands, declaring Thursday a “paid holiday” and sharing a mock permission slip asking employers to excuse workers so they could watch the game.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton endorsed the idea on social media, writing, “I endorse this message.”
The jokes are funny, but they also highlight the problem. Fans shouldn’t need a celebrity’s permission slip to watch one of the biggest games on the WNBA calendar.
A missed opportunity for the WNBA
This is the second season with a 44-game regular season, and the second season since the Finals expanded from a best-of-five to a best-of-seven series. Game 6 is already part of the longest WNBA Finals in league history, with the extended format creating more opportunities for a compelling championship story.
Instead, the series has been marked by a lengthy wait to begin, shifting dates, weekday afternoon tipoffs and arena conflicts.
The WNBA deserves credit for finding a way to put the Dream in a bigger building. The Hawks also adjusted their schedule to make the doubleheader possible. But the larger question is why a potential championship-clinching game was left in this position in the first place.
The NBA’s involvement makes the optics worse. The leagues are closely connected, and the WNBA benefits from the NBA’s infrastructure and platform. That relationship should help create opportunities for women’s basketball, not leave its championship competing for the calendar.
There is at least one consolation for fans who cannot watch live: Game 6 will be re-aired at 8 p.m. EDT on USA Network and CNBC, giving viewers another chance to catch the action during primetime.
That is helpful, but it is not the same as watching history happen in real time.
The Valkyries have built a passionate fan base in just their second season, and the Dream have earned the chance to compete for a championship in front of their home crowd. Both teams deserve the biggest possible stage.
Instead, fans are being asked to plan their mornings around a scheduling problem that should have been solved long before the Finals arrived.
The WNBA has a chance to finish a historic season with a memorable championship moment. It should not have made that moment so difficult for fans to watch.