They Convicted a Building Nobody Has Picked

The outrage got filed before the decision did.

Monday, 9:56 in the morning. Yahoo Sports printed that the Atlanta Dream will play their Finals home games at Gateway Center Arena. Flat. Settled. No hedge.

Monday, 5:18 in the evening. WSB-TV — the station whose own reporter broke the Gateway story, and who hedged it himself — told Atlanta that where the Dream will play has not been settled.

Seven and a half hours apart. Same day, same story, opposite certainty. The newsroom with the sourcing was careful. The desks without it were sure.

By then it was a national verdict. A Yahoo opinion piece. A column in the opponent's hometown paper in San Francisco. Craig Carton tying what he called the arena embarrassment straight to the league's agenda obsession.

Nobody waited. ESPN's beat writer still has the location undetermined. The Dream's president said last week the club was "finalizing details." Four days from Game 1, no statement from the team or the league names a building.

Here is what the chorus skipped. The Dream have sold out every game at Gateway Center Arena over the last three seasons — their own release says it. That is a small room. It is not a humiliating one. A sellout does not become an embarrassment because you wanted a bigger number attached to it.

I am not telling you 3,500 seats is the right stage for a championship. I am telling you the people loudest about disrespect published before anybody decided anything, and used this city as the evidence.

Bookmark this. Whenever the Dream finally announce, the same accounts will cover it like news they broke.