The Dream Got the Finals. The Hawks Got October 24.

Three days before the Dream won the right to host a WNBA Finals game, the reason they could not host it downtown had already been published. It sat inside a wire story about next season, where nobody was looking for it.

In June, under a headline that said seventeen thousand people filled a Hawks building, and not for the Hawks, I argued the Dream had not borrowed State Farm Arena so much as revealed what it becomes when a city decides to show up. Atlanta have now reached their first Finals since 2013, and on October 6 the Associated Press reported that the room is not available to them.

The AP's sentence: "If the Dream make the WNBA Finals, they will have to play at another venue." And the reason: "State Farm Arena isn't available because of a concert and the Hawks' home opener on Oct. 24."

That checks out against our own beat. The Hawks' home opener is Saturday, October 24, against Houston at State Farm Arena; they host Cleveland there on Thursday, October 29. Those are the dates of Finals Game 4 and Game 6. Two of Atlanta's three possible home dates already belong to the building's other tenant.

Where they go instead has not been announced. ESPN's schedule lists all three Atlanta dates at Gateway Center in College Park, where the Dream played most of their home games this season. No club or league statement names a building. So: in Atlanta, and nobody has said more.

College Park would not mean a quiet night: the Dream's own release this month says they have sold out every game at Gateway Center Arena over the last three seasons. What is in short supply on the 22nd is square footage. The city settled the other question in June, in the building that is now booked.

The second squeeze is structural, and it reads like a contradiction only if you refuse to name the systems. Atlanta finished first in the Eastern Conference, outright, at 30-14. Atlanta are also the No. 4 seed in these Finals. Both are true. The WNBA brackets its eight-team playoff field league-wide on win percentage rather than by conference, so Golden State, who finished second in the West behind Minnesota, are the No. 2 seed, and the No. 2 seed hosts Games 1, 2, 5 and 7. Atlanta do not get a home game until October 22. That decides the locker-room assignment, not the quality of either team.

Which brings up the team waiting at Chase Center on Saturday, a franchise this desk has never written a word about. Golden State are in their second season: no superstar, a second-year head coach in Natalie Nakase, and an owner who settled the superstar question himself. Joe Lacob told ESPN, "Print this: Gabby Williams is the best player in the world." Williams has averaged 22.7 points, 4.8 rebounds and 4.0 assists in six playoff games and led Golden State in scoring in both rounds. Becky Hammon, whose Las Vegas team they just swept, put it another way: "It seems like nobody cares who gets the credit."

Atlanta are 5-0 this postseason, the last of those on Friday night. Golden State are 5-1; they lost in overtime at Dallas on September 30. The only unbeaten team left has never beaten the only opponent left.

Golden State won all three regular-season meetings by a combined 19 points, and the first was never as close as its 11-point final: they led by 26. In the two that stayed tight, Atlanta led going into the fourth quarter and lost both, outscored 58 to 44 across those periods.

Look underneath the margins. Atlanta averaged 91.3 points a game this season and scored 74.7 in the three meetings, nearly 17 below their own rate, while Golden State scored 81.0 against a season average of 82.2. Golden State did not outscore Atlanta. They subtracted Atlanta. They allowed 75.1 points a game this year, fewest in the league by 7.6. All three losses also fell inside the only five-game losing streak Atlanta had all year, which is the honest counterweight.

Atlanta arrive with the best player of this postseason by my reading: Jordin Canada, 33-of-64 from the floor, 44 assists, 18-of-18 from the line, now level with Rhyne Howard at 96 points. That remains a position rather than a proven thing, and Angel Reese's Defensive Player of the Year is a season award that leaves it where it was.

The date was spoken for before the Dream earned it. Wherever Game 3 lands on the 22nd, this city has already shown what it does with those tickets. It did it in June, in a building that has other plans in October.