Thanks to a stunningly shortsighted series of logistical missteps, Thursday’s Game 6 at State Farm Arena tips off at 12:30 p.m. A game that could crown the second-year Valkyries as surprising upstart champions, but too bad for them, won’t include an ongoing on-court celebration as they would be shuffled instead to a practice gym while the arena readies itself for an 8 p.m. Atlanta Hawks tipoff.

A league in its 30th year of existence is exposed, stop me if you’ve heard this before, for failing to meet the moment.

Oh, there are plenty of logical explanations for how we got here, how the WNBA, along with its majority owners in the NBA, are making the best of a tough situation, honoring the home crowd in Atlanta by ensuring the game is in 17,500-seat State Farm rather than the 3,500-seat Gateway Center that has been the Dream’s regular home. But to do so at the expense of the prime-time television audience does a terrible disservice to a billion-dollar league that has continually proven its growth track. To have left that decision unmade until Monday afternoon is beyond defensible.

All of which says nothing about the optics of making a vastly more consequential women’s game the opener for a relatively meaningless men’s game. The way this has unfolded publicly, and the backlash that has ensued, is just another reminder of WNBA leadership being ill-prepared for what should have been an obviously potential scenario. What a fitting coda for outgoing commissioner Cathy Engelbert, whose business acumen in overseeing exponential revenue growth and brokering labor peace has never escaped the shadow of her inability to navigate public perception and common sense.

This is not to blame the Hawks, who did delay the tipoff of their sixth regular-season game against the Cavaliers to 8 p.m. to help ease the logjam. The Hawks do not share an ownership group with the Dream and will only begin sharing an arena with them next season. They already had adjusted their schedule across Games 3 and 4 at State Farm, and by collective bargaining rules, could not play the afternoon game on Thursday because it would have come too soon after Wednesday night’s home game.

And maybe we give some latitude to the Dream, if their contentions in a letter to fans Tuesday night are to be believed. They went on the offensive.

“Two months ago, when the WNBA finalized playoff dates and times, we raised concerns that the W Finals schedule conflicted with NBA games at State Farm Arena,” the letter read. “As we moved through the playoffs, we reiterated those concerns. Our concerns did not receive the attention, nor the urgency, that they deserved.”

Maybe the WNBA was simply hoping the series would be over by now, like it was last year, when in the first time the Finals expanded to seven games, Las Vegas swept Phoenix. Or maybe the league just miscalculated the response, figuring to be applauded for honoring an in-person crowd that has shown up in both cities in record numbers, selling out every Finals game. But the WNBA is bigger than that now, and even if it meant pushing Games 6 and 7 back a day to stay in prime time and be in an NBA arena, that would have been preferable.

Simply promising to provide an encore presentation of Game 6 in that primo television window — as the league and USA Network plan to do — is cold comfort, harkening back to a time when women’s sports were inarguable second-class citizens, relegated to opening acts and tape-delayed broadcasts.

“Perhaps it was assumed that the Dream would not make it this far,” the owners said in their letter. “Perhaps, our place in the Finals was not accounted for. Whatever the reason, the reality is that we are here. We earned our place in the Finals, and our city deserves the opportunity to show up for its team. Playing a midday game on a Thursday is not what we would have chosen and not what we fought for.”

We deserved better. Fans. Audiences. Players. But there these women sat, in the wake of Monday’s Game 5 win by Golden State, talking about schedules instead of stat lines.

“Call in sick,” Newton native and Valkyries star Veronica Burton urged fans. “I recommend it.”

“Y’all know how to fake a cough,” echoed teammate Kiah Stokes. “Didn’t we all do that?”

Perhaps we did. But it never should have come to it. The WNBA, the leader in making everything too hard, does it again.

Tara Sullivan is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at tara.sullivan@globe.com. Follow her @Globe_Tara.