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‘What We Doing?’ — Tracy McGrady Rips NBA For Mishandling Angel Reese, Dream’s WNBA Finals Venue Crisis After Valkyries Take Pivotal Game 5
Collage featuring BASKETBALL-NBA-ORL-CLE/ and BASKETBALL-WNBA-GSV-ATL/. USA TODAY Sports via Reuters Con / IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect
Collage featuring BASKETBALL-NBA-ORL-CLE/ and BASKETBALL-WNBA-GSV-ATL/. USA TODAY Sports via Reuters Con / IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

The Golden State Valkyries beat the Atlanta Dream 64-55 in Game 5 on Monday at the Chase Center to take a 3-2 series lead. Game 6 is now set for Thursday in Atlanta, but the game has been moved to 12:30 p.m. ET rather than a prime-time slot after the league spent days resolving a scheduling conflict.

Hall of Famer Tracy McGrady was not happy about that. He questioned why a WNBA Finals game is being played at lunchtime while an NBA regular season game gets the prime time slot on the same night.

Tracy McGrady Stresses WNBA Finals Game 6 Deserves a Prime Time Slot

The scheduling complication comes down to the Dream’s home situation. Atlanta’s regular arena, Gateway Center Arena, can hold just 3,500 fans. For the Finals, the Dream moved their home games to State Farm Arena, where the Hawks play and which seats 17,000.

The problem for Game 6 was that the Hawks were already scheduled to host the Cleveland Cavaliers on Thursday at roughly the same time. The concerned parties it by moving pushing the Hawks-Cavaliers tip off to 8 p.m.

Tracy McGrady weighed in on the situation and went straight at the NBA’s priorities.

“The Hawks need to be playing at 1230. WNBA should be 7 o’clock prime-time. What we doing?” McGrady stressed.

This would be the third game to require scheduling adjustments. Game 3 had originally been set for October 22, but a Sombr concert already booked at State Farm Arena that night forced the WNBA to move it up one day to October 21.

Game 4 on October 24 tipped off 2.5 hours earlier than planned at 1 p.m. ET so the arena could be cleared before the Hawks hosted the Houston Rockets that same evening.

But then the series was tied 2-2 after Golden State’s 67-62 win on Saturday, and by Sunday the league still had no confirmed time or venue for Game 6. Talks between the WNBA, NBA, Valkyries, Dream, and Hawks ran through the weekend with no answer.

Both teams were already scheduled for back-to-backs, and moving Thursday’s game to Cleveland would have created a home-road back-to-back for the Hawks.

Georgia Tech’s McCamish Pavilion was considered but not deemed an appropriate venue for a Finals game. The league was also reportedly uncomfortable with a weekday afternoon tip-off for a Finals game to begin with.

The biggest option on the table was moving Game 6 to Friday entirely and pushing a potential Game 7 back to Tuesday, November 3, but that required agreement from both teams, and the Valkyries raised concerns about three days off between each remaining game.

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