Brett Davis-Imagn Images
Angel Reese and Kiah Stokes during the 2026 WNBA Finals
The WNBA has come a long way in its quest to be taken seriously instead of being viewed as an afterthought. However, it still has some work to do on that front when you consider a game that has the potential to crown this season’s champion will tip off when many people are eating lunch on a workday.
It’s been 30 years since the WNBA kicked off its inaugural season, and while the league boasted the talents of some of the best players on the planet in the ensuing decades, it struggled to turn a profit while relying on the NBA to subsidize its quest to legitimize women’s basketball as a viable entertainment product.
It has managed to do exactly that in recent years, as it was boosted by the arrival of Caitlin Clark in 2024 and media deals that led to the league recording its most impressive viewership numbers since the start of the millennium this season.
Things are certainly trending in the right direction, but there are still plenty of issues it’s forced to deal with while firmly existing in the shadow of the NBA. That reality has been highlighted by scheduling issues during the ongoing WNBA Finals, and the solution it opted for while dealing that problem ahead of Game 6 is certainly a tough look.
Game 6 of the NBA Finals will be held on a Thursday afternoon after the league got boxed out by the Hawks
The Golden State Valkyries only needed two seasons to punch their ticket to the WNBA Finals for the first time, and they met an Atlanta Dream team that headed into their series hoping to secure its first title after previously falling short in the deciding round on three occasions (the most recent of which came in 2013).
The Dream were actually hoping to get their first win in a WNBA Finals game after being swept in all of their prior appearances, and they checked that box with a victory that evened things up at one game apiece last week.
The two squads split the two contests that were subsequently played in Atlanta, which had to be shuffled around to address scheduling conflicts linked to a concert and a Hawks game at State Farm Arena, which can host 17,044 fans (the Gateway Center, which the Dream primarily called home during the regular season, can only accommodate around 3,500).
There’s no telling who will have the chance to clinch the championship when Game 6 is held on Thursday, but one of those teams will have the chance to put the series away depending on how things pan out when Game 5 unfolds on Monday night.
However, there were a ton of question marks surrounding Game 6 after we learned it would be needed, as the Hawks had a game scheduled at the same venue on the evening of October 29th.
According to Ramona Shelburne, the league explored the possibility of postponing things until Friday night while also pushing a potential Game 7 at Oracle Arena from Halloween to November 3rd, but Game 6 will ultimately get underway at 12:30 PM on Thursday after the Hawks agreed to push the start of their showdown with the Cavaliers to 8 PM.
After a weekend of nonstop frantic discussions and negotiation, Game 6 of the WNBA Finals will be played Thursday at 12:30 pm at 17,000-seat State Farm Arena in Atlanta, sources told ESPN.
The Atlanta Hawks-Cleveland Cavaliers game that night will move back to 8 pm to accommodate the doubleheader, just as the Hawks did for Game 4. This allows a potential Game 7 to remain scheduled for Halloween at Chase Center in San Francisco.
All three Finals games in Atlanta have required hurried adjustments to the schedule at State Farm Arena. It took collective efforts from the WNBA, NBA, the Hawks, State Farm Arena, Dream, Valkyries and broadcast partners to figure out the best course of action again.
By moving the game earlier in the day, the WNBA avoided a scenario where a potential championship game was played inside the Dream’s home arena, the 3,500 seat Gateway Center.
The other option under strong consideration was moving Game 6 to an open date at State Farm Arena on Friday and Game 7 to an open date at Chase Center on Tuesday, November 3.
— Ramona Shelburne (@ramonashelburne) October 26, 2026
Shelburne notes this solution avoided ” a scenario where a potential championship game was played inside the Dream’s home arena,” and while more fans will have the chance to attend it in person, you really have to wonder what the tradeoff will be on the television front when you consider most people are going to be working when it’s played.
At the end of the day, any solution was going to be less than ideal, but it sort of feels like the league went with one of the worse ones at first glance.