The WNBA has a scheduling problem, and the pressure is on to fix it

Yahoo

4 days ago

Last Sunday, June 22, should've been a banner day for the WNBA, with three thrilling games on the schedule. The Aces outlasted the Fever, a matchup of two of the game's biggest stars in A'ja Wilson and Caitlin Clark. The Mystics won in overtime against the Wings, providing a glimpse of what the future of the WNBA holds with Sonia Citron and Kiki Iriafen facing off against Paige Bueckers. Meanwhile, Allisha Gray and Rhyne Howard had great games for the Dream against the Sky. The best of the WNBA was on display.
The problem? All three games started at 3 p.m. ET. With Game 7 of the NBA Finals tipping off at 8 p.m., the WNBA had the entire day to show off its product. Instead, it squeezed all three games into the same time slot. It's just one example of a larger problem that has continued to rear its head for the WNBA — the scheduling is just awful.
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Multiple games starting at the same time are just the tip of the iceberg. As the WNBA season has expanded to 44 games, the footprint of the schedule has not grown. Teams will have stretches with no games followed by a sprint of back-to-backs, or games every other day.
It's an issue the players are not happy with. The league's current collective bargaining agreement is set to expire at the end of this season, and while money is the biggest bone of contention, the schedule is also a key point for players.
'I think this is a conversation that could also be important for the next CBA,' the Mercury's Satou Sabally said in early June . 'Cathy (Englebert) added a lot of games, and for us as players, recovery is so important. We put our bodies on the line every single time. We had nine games in 18 days. It's not really responsible for a commissioner to do so. Other teams have like three back-to-backs. Hence, there are many things that we could clean up in terms of scheduling, but we persevered, and we have shown that we can do so. It's just something that, obviously, along the way throughout a long season, that's really hard to do.'
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The Liberty's Breanna Stewart echoed Sabally's comments earlier this month .
'We want to play the games especially if that's what is wanted for TV and having these sellout arenas,' said Stewart. 'I think the hardest part is no matter what, when I was playing 36 games or 32 games it was in the same amount of time as 44 games. I know on both ends, between April and October, there's things happening,' she added. 'But I think that's one of the biggest talking points in the next CBA is like, alright, how can we make it so teams aren't playing four [games] in six [days] three times in a season and continuing to have the rest and recovery so we are at our best. It's tough, it's a tough thing.'
As Stewart alluded to, the NBA regular season starts in late October and ends in mid-April. Several WNBA teams — the Lynx, Fever, Liberty and Mercury — share arenas with NBA teams. Others, like the Wings and Sky, use collegiate arenas. The scheduling isn't easy when you're juggling several arena tenants and other events that might be happening in a city. For example, the Chicago Sky are currently on an extended road trip as Chicago prepares to host a NASCAR race on its streets on July 6. Television schedules also play a part.
But scheduling being difficult isn't a good reason for it not being done well. Take a look at the Liberty's schedule, for example. The last week of May, they played four games over six days, including a back-to-back with travel in the middle of the stretch. But the next four games had four days in between them. In July, they will have six days between two games with the Fever, both in New York. Then at the end of July, they'll have three games in four days, with a trip to Dallas at the end of it.
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There's not a clear rhythm to the season because of the way games are spread out and then smushed together. Athletes love routine, but this kind of schedule makes that difficult. Coaches, trainers and strength and conditioning staff do everything they can, but it's hard for the players to get into a flow with this schedule.
This isn't just an issue for players, either. For fans, the inconsistent scheduling can render one of the league's best offerings — League Pass — unusable. On Sunday, the Indiana-Las Vegas game was on ESPN, with the other two on League Pass. Since I live in Chicago, I couldn't watch the Sky game on League Pass, so I tried to switch between the Aces-Fever game and the Dream-Sky game on a local station via my TV provider. Most of the Mystics-Wings game was not easy to get to, since it was in a whole different app on my TV. I caught the overtime since the other games were over, but that was it.
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Instead of having a whole day of WNBA games, if the game times had been staggered, I had two hours and some change of frenetic watching. Basketball isn't like football or baseball, where the action is stop-and-start enough that it's easy to jump back in when flipping between games.
Scheduling issues aren't going away any time soon, either. No matter what happens with the CBA next season, the WNBA will need to contend with the FIBA World Cup, which will run September 4-13, 2026, in Berlin. Players for the U.S., Germany, Belgium, Australia, France, China, Brazil and more will want to represent their countries in this important Olympic qualifier.
This season shows just how much the WNBA has to figure out before an even more complicated schedule could go into effect next season.