Credit: John Jones-Imagn Images
By Drew Lerner on

It’s Thursday night. The NBA Finals have, at long last, tipped off. Basketball fans are, by-and-large, locked into Game 1 of the Oklahoma City Thunder-Indiana Pacers series.

But over on Amazon Prime, two important WNBA games are being played directly against Game 1 of the NBA Finals. The defending champion New York Liberty are taking on the Washington Mystics, and later, the Golden State Valkyries are playing the Phoenix Mercury. Both games are part of the WNBA’s Commissioner’s Cup, the league’s in-season competition that has been contested since 2021.

For a league that has done so well in growing its product’s reach in recent years, playing games directly against the NBA Finals seems like a complete own goal. Most NBA Finals games have two rest days between them. That’s plenty of time for the WNBA to fit in its regular season games without conflict. Instead, the league is overshadowing two Commissioner’s Cup games for no reason.

Unfortunately, Thursday won’t be the only night this conflict occurs. Next Friday, June 13, a WNBA doubleheader on Ion will go head-to-head with Game 4 of the NBA Finals. A smaller conflict will happen two days prior, when CBS Sports Network airs a Los Angeles Sparks-Las Vegas Aces game at 10 p.m. ET, which will coincide with the second half of the NBA Finals Game 3.

It seems like, with just a little bit of foresight, this could’ve been avoided.

Look, playing a few games during the NBA Finals isn’t the end of the world. There are plenty of WNBA regular-season games that are nationally televised. But the league is taking one of the slowest times on the sports calendar and deciding to schedule games against some of the only desirable programming.

Take Wednesday night, for instance, which was Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals. While that’s desirable programming, it’s not on the same level as the NBA Finals. Look no further than how the Women’s College World Series performed on ESPN directly against Game 1. The softball game averaged 2.11 million viewers, and the hockey game averaged 2.42 million viewers. There was counter-programming to be had, especially considering there were no WNBA games at all on Wednesday.

To be certain, this is not an egregious error on the part of the WNBA. It just seems shortsighted and a missed opportunity to schedule some basketball on nights where the NBA Finals are not being played.

About Drew Lerner

Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.

View all posts by Drew Lerner