In case you missed Bill Maher's comments on this.
Lebron is also 100% correct.
Personally, I think a number of the NBA stars don't like a white "younger phenom" doing what they couldn't...make the league profitable. Tickets prices for her team have increased 130% since last year, avg gate (# attendees) up 93%. Instead of playing dirty against her, backstabbing her on social media those idiots should thank her.
God forbid the world's most popular female basketball player get to represent her country in the Olympics.
BTW in case you missed Ms Carter flattening Clark (when Caitlin didn't have the ball and was turned away from her. No animosity there...haha.
Caitlin Clark Won’t Be at the Olympics. For Basketball, It’s a Total Brick.
An opportunity is lost as the Iowa sensation is left off the U.S. women’s roster for the Summer Games in Paris
Caitlin Clark was left off the U.S. basketball roster for the Paris Olympics. HARRY
By Jason Gay
June 9, 2024
Caitlin Clark, the women’s basketball phenom and America’s leading sports media content machine, has been left off the U.S. roster for the Summer Olympics in Paris, and a lot of people are freeaaaking out.
I have thoughts, of course, but a warning: Some of these thoughts may sound in conflict with each other! You can have multiple feelings about the same topic—I don’t care what the rules of 21st century anger say!
OK here we go:
Leaving Clark off Team USA is a comical blunder of industrial self-sabotage—but also not that surprising. Let’s start with the unsurprising part. Team USA women’s basketball is a formidable juggernaut. Since Atlanta 1996, they have won the gold medal at seven straight Summer Games, and they will be heavy favorites again in France. This is a program with a legacy and a system—and though they have snubbed stars before (Candace Parker, Nneka Ogwumike) they’re not used to this sort of furious blowback from the public. They’re used to winning, and from a winning standpoint, it’s hard to argue: Team USA’s chances are going to be fine without Caitlin Clark. They are also going to be fine if they start a pinball machine at point guard.
But if Olympic basketball is also a business—and it is a business, like any element of the Olympics—then passing over a player who’s become a stadium-filling sensation is a strange and stubborn choice. Here was a low-risk opportunity to add a talented, already-on-the-roster-bubble rookie who would introduce a massive wave of new fans to the Olympic theater. These fans might not have followed prior U.S. teams, but so what? Clark’s inclusion would have lifted attention around the U.S. team in an extremely crowded Olympic calendar.
Think about it. Even if she seldom played a minute, Clark’s presence in Paris would have increased attention, coverage, eyeballs, merchandise, sponsorship opportunities…please stop when you think any of this is bad. By not including her, Team USA is fumbling an opportunity to ride a genuine grassroots phenomenon and raise the profile of its entire program. It’s daffy.
Selecting an Olympic team is almost always a heartbreaking process. This is also true! Maybe your favorite sport is lucky, and its Olympic roster is strictly based upon performance at pre-Games trials. But even in that scenario, great talent—potentially medal-winning talent—may be left home. Broken hearts are unavoidable. Had Clark made the roster, another deserving player would have snubbed. Clark isn’t even the biggest snub on Team USA this year—Dallas’s Arike Ogunbowale is also not on the final roster, and she’s the WNBA’s second-leading scorer. These decisions are painful.
These Olympics were unlikely to be a showcase for Caitlin Clark—at least not on the court. Once more, Team USA has a stacked roster, full of veteran talent and an outrageous amount of Games experience. (Diana Taurasi, who’s about to turn 42, is going for a record sixth gold.) Clark plays guard, a position rich in roster talent, and she may have been buried on the bench, especially in close and consequential games. To be clear, this is not a reason to not include her—there are clear benefits to giving young players early Olympic exposure, like Taurasi herself got in 2004. It’s just an acknowledgment that Clark may have been doing a lot of watching in Paris.
The notion of Clark as an Olympic “distraction” is silly. This is the idea that adding Clark would have created unhelpful drama if she didn’t play a lot of minutes, because her fans would have been miffed. This was a factor, USA Today reported.
I don’t know what to say about that sort of gloomy hand-wringing. Coaches make unpopular choices about player minutes all the time—that’s the job. It also takes the cynical position that Clark’s fans can only be interested in Clark, and there was no chance of their passion being expanded to stars like Taurasi, Breanna Stewart and A’ja Wilson, the last of whom has a case as the best women’s player on the planet. You could have brought in a fresh audience to appreciate Wilson’s greatness, and turn it away? Again: daffy.
The idea that Clark would personally create a distraction circus also seems doubtful. The 22-year-old has been very on-message during her collegiate and young pro career—she went out of her way to squash tension with Chennedy Carter, who knocked her over in a game last week, even praising Carter’s performance this season as “tremendous.” It’s hard to believe Clark would have been undiplomatic about a part-time (or very part-time) role.
A’ja Wilson, left, and Diana Taurasi during a training session for the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. PHOTO: ARIS MESSINIS/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Waiting until 2028 comes with no guarantees. I’ve repeatedly seen the comment that Clark’s “time will come,” and that’s a fair thing to say about a player fresh out of college, but I’m less certain Clark will be the same sort of mass phenomenon when the next Olympic cycle rolls around. What we’re seeing right now—this is rock star level attention, incredibly hard to sustain for another four years (ask a rock star). Team USA might get Clark the player in Los Angeles 2028—and 2032 and beyond—but it might be missing the window of the movement.
Clark’s story continues to morph from feel-good to feel-weird…but Clark plays on. What a roller coaster these past couple of months have been—the extreme high of Clark’s record-setting final college season and her No. 1 WNBA draft selection morphing into an extended debate about deservedness and disrespect of prior women’s players. Some discussion points are valid—Clark has had some struggles with the transition to pro ball, and there are indeed legends before her who paved the way. But in the arguing, a lot of joy is getting sucked out of the experience. Now people are shouting over each other, instead of watching Clark and the WNBA players do their thing.
You know who doesn’t seem too bothered? Caitlin Clark. She had 30 points the other night, the second time she’s hit that number this season. She’s going to be OK. Next week, next month—and in 2028.
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