The Valkyries may be forced to celebrate their championship on the training ground

The Golden State Valkyries could find themselves in the awkward position of having to celebrate a historic championship victory in an auxiliary gymnasium.

The Valkyries secured a 3-2 series lead against the Dream on Monday, beating Atlanta 64-55 at home to bring Golden State within one win of winning a championship just two seasons into its existence. However, if they are victorious on Thursday, the celebrations may not take place in the traditional setting of the pitch on which the winning team won. They could be on a training ground instead.

That’s according to ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne, who was on the NBA Today show Monday to discuss the current scheduling mess the WNBA is facing for the Finals. While Atlanta will continue to host every Finals game at State Farm Arena, a 17,000-plus seat arena where the Atlanta Hawks play, the tradeoff is that they will have to play Game 6 at 12:30 p.m. locally (that’s 9:30 a.m. for those in California) and will have to quickly vacate the arena for full-time NBA tenants before their scheduled 8 p.m. local tipoff. This scheduling issue already happened with Game 4, where teams and media were rushed out the door once the postgame interviews were over.

This was done to avoid hosting a finals game in the Dream’s usual home: the 3,500-seat Gateway Center Arena in College Park. As a result, any possible Valkyries celebrations will have to wait.

“This championship celebration may not take place on this field,” Shelburne said in a television appearance. “I heard there were discussions about whether there was enough time to turn the arena around in time for the fans to celebrate on the field. It could be moved to look like a practice field… Look, 12:30 p.m., just do the math.

“And what do you want to do, tell people to wrap up your celebrations so we can start the Hawks game?” Shelburne added. “It’s not a good option, but it’s the option they chose.”

A championship always meant making Golden State history. But, in potentially hoisting a championship trophy on a training ground, it appears there will be a story that may not be worth celebrating.