{"id":895850,"date":"2026-10-27T01:39:18","date_gmt":"2026-10-27T01:39:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/895850\/"},"modified":"2026-10-27T01:39:18","modified_gmt":"2026-10-27T01:39:18","slug":"wnba-championship-may-be-decided-on-a-thursday-morning-because-an-nba-game-took-priority","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/895850\/","title":{"rendered":"WNBA championship may be decided on a Thursday morning because an NBA game took priority"},"content":{"rendered":"

The WNBA scheduled its potential championship-clinching game<\/a> for 12:30 p.m. ET Thursday, the league announced<\/a>, settling a logistical nightmare that appeared to have few satisfactory solutions.<\/p>\n

The Golden State Valkyries and the Atlanta Dream\u2019s<\/a> Game 6 had always been set for Thursday night in Georgia with its location and exact tipoff time listed as TBD because of a series of scheduling conflicts.<\/p>\n

The Dream\u2019s playoff home, State Farm Arena, has an Atlanta Hawks game scheduled for Thursday night.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe thank the NBA, Dream, Valkyries, Hawks, State Farm Arena and USA Network for the collaboration and flexibility that made this move possible,\u201d retiring WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert<\/a> said in a statement Monday afternoon. <\/p>\n

The Dream played most of its 2026 season at the 3,500-seat Gateway Center Arena at College Park, the league\u2019s smallest building. The team had been able to move major regular-season games and all playoff contests to State Farm Arena, the 17,000-seat home of the NBA\u2019s Atlanta Hawks.<\/p>\n

But with Game 6 set for Thursday, the same day as a 7 p.m. Hawks game against the Cleveland Cavaliers at State Farm, that big venue was not available for a primetime women\u2019s game.<\/p>\n

If the Valkyries win Monday\u2019s Game 5 in San Francisco, their West Coast fans would have to get to a TV by 9:30 a.m. PT Thursday and possibly pop champagne bottles before noon should Golden State wrap it up in Atlanta. <\/p>\n

In the WNBA\u2019s prepared statement, Engelbert did not address the odd start time and focused on the league\u2019s playing in front of a larger crowd.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sellout crowds and extraordinary atmosphere of State Farm Arena for Games 3 and 4 were a tremendous success and we\u2019re excited to give thousands more fans the opportunity to experience Game 6 with a championship on the line,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The WNBA, the arena, the broadcasters and the teams had to make adjustments just to get Games 3 and 4 into State Farm.<\/p>\n

Game 3 was moved up by one day to Wednesday<\/a>, rescheduled from Thursday, when State Farm played host to a Sombr concert.<\/p>\n

Game 4 was shifted to an earlier time Saturday, to 1 p.m. from 3:30 p.m. ET, so arena workers had enough time to convert State Farm for the Hawks\u2019 game against the Houston Rockets that night<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The WNBA scheduled its potential championship-clinching game for 12:30 p.m. ET Thursday, the league announced, settling a logistical…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":895851,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99],"class_list":["post-895850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=895850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/895851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=895850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=895850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=895850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}