SAN FRANCISCO – The sun rose above Union Square on Monday, with cable car bells chiming just hours before Game 5 of the WNBA Finals, and nobody had a clue where Game 6 would be played or when. This is a statement of actual fact. It is also unbelievable. Anyone who cared about a riveting championship round — attendance figures and television ratings suggest more than a few people do — had no idea where the league was heading.
On occasion, that’s been an existential question about this operation, asked with tongue buried in cheek. A nudge in the ribs. In this case, the direction of the WNBA was a literal unknown, and an embarrassment: The date and arena for a potentially championship-clinching event was undecided. If you were having lunch in Atlanta on Monday, you still had no idea where or when a basketball game that’s guaranteed to be played there would be, well, played.
And here is the solution everyone arrived at, once they stopped stepping on all the rakes: A day game. Someone may win a WNBA championship after tipping off at 12:30 p.m. on a weekday, and that someone may be a team from the West Coast whose extremely devoted fans can just about squeeze breakfast in beforehand.
Inexcusably obtuse planning, astoundingly bad optics, and most of all a wildly crappy thing to do to the people who consume your product, all during the biggest showcase of the sport. A time for celebration now tagged with a punchline. Slow claps all around.
“We look forward to delivering another unforgettable Finals experience in Atlanta,” outgoing commissioner Cathy Engelbert said in a statement delivered midday Monday, and she’s certainly right about the unforgettable part.
A brief recap of this series of unfortunate events: The Atlanta Dream have played most of their home games at a 3,500-seat arena by the airport. Playoff games were moved to downtown State Farm Arena, home to the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks, for all the reasons you don’t want to stage playoff games in a sandbox. And despite the WNBA establishing the date for the finals months ago, wouldn’t you know it, conflicts arose for every single game set to take place in Atlanta.
Previous solutions — bumping Game 3 up a day to accommodate a Sombr concert, shifting Game 4 to an earlier tipoff for what was essentially a day-night WNBA-NBA doubleheader — were minor enough. And, yes, everything is complicated by the franchises having separate ownership groups. The Dream, effectively, are subletters for now. (They will be full-time tenants starting next season.)
It’s true the contractual entanglements are an issue. It’s true that Gateway Center Arena is an extremely limited venue in a relatively far-flung location and no one’s idea of a proper home for a playoff series.
It’s nevertheless also an issue that it took this long to figure out. And it’s indisputably an issue that the biggest game on the WNBA’s calendar will take a backseat to a week 2 regular-season tilt.
This is comical. This is insulting. This is a preposterous mishandling of your product at the worst imaginable time.
League owners might want to tear up Engelbert’s resignation letter, just so they can fire her instead.
Credit to the fans of this sport, who increasingly show up for a league that kicks dirt in their eyes. It’s one thing to leave potential celebrity attendees guessing — for the love of God, won’t somebody think of Ludacris? — and the Dream and Valkyries were traveling back to Atlanta anyway. (Although Golden State, as an organization, should be incensed by a “fix” that harms its base most of all.) But for any regular person looking to buy a seat for Game 6 early Monday morning, this is the information Ticketmaster provided:
“We’re sorry, but we couldn’t find any upcoming games for the Atlanta Dream. Please try updating your date range.”
That was 72 hours before this upcoming game was officially upcoming. Taking people for granted is not a strategy. At some point, there’s no goodwill left to throw into the incinerator. Presumably, we’re a long way from that, based on the season-long attendance figures. Presumably, the imminent change in league leadership will build back some benefit of the doubt.
But then presuming the WNBA Finals wouldn’t conflict with “The Young and the Restless” is what got us here.
There’s no point in assigning blame, because almost everyone is to blame. It is a fitting coda to an Engelbert era marked by tremendous growth and also a tremendous ability to botch layups and bungle progress. For every two steps forward, a total face plant.
What a completely avoidable shame. Even the most cynical observers of the WNBA can’t ignore the dynamic in-arena scenes during this finals series, on both sides of the country. People are filling 18,000-seat arenas. People are getting loud and having fun. Two of the best defensive teams in the league are making each other miserable, to be sure, and the games are a hard grind. But if the basketball is a drag, the atmosphere is not. It’s been a party.
Now the party moves to a Thursday afternoon. WNBA fans, above all else during the halftime show, please mute yourself on Zoom.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Atlanta Dream, Golden State Valkyries, WNBA, Sports Business, Opinion
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