Why Caitlin Clark's removal from the Olympic team was the right decision

WNBA

by Jonathan Lehman

The question of whether Caitlin Clark should have made the U.S. women's Olympic basketball team has a controversial, apparently dirty little secret conclusion: The players who made the team were better.

I’m a better basketball player now and I’m better suited to my primary goal of bringing home a gold medal from Paris.

“It's the most competitive team in the world,” Clarke said at the weekend when the exclusions were made public. “If you look at the squad, there are a lot of players who have had the opportunity to play in this league who are really good. The 12 that have been selected are really good players so they will be playing for a pretty good manager.”

Maybe she was just being generous, but what she said was accurate.

Clarke will be great, but the phenom's first month in the WNBA against the best in the world has been marked by missteps and turnovers and she's not there yet. There's no shame in being the 14th most eligible player in the country.

The Olympics shouldn't be a popularity contest, a sports-themed reality show (“If you set the collegiate scoring record, you're exempt from the next bracket challenge”) or a ratings grab.

Tiger Woods will not and should not be selected for the US national team because of clicks, and Alex Morgan has no right to cite social media follower numbers in her relentless criticism of women's soccer.

If NBC can't sell the story of a star-studded international team chasing an eighth consecutive gold medal, that's an NBC problem and an advertiser problem, not the United States Basketball Association problem.

The promotion features A'ja Wilson, the best player in the world. Breanna Stewart, Alyssa Thomas and Napheesa Collier are also featured at the peak of their powers. Brittney Griner, who has now finished her time in a concentration camp, is standing tall representing the land of the free.

While perhaps not a replacement for pitching to the lowest demographic, the phrase “growing the game” may be a missed opportunity to welcome new viewers for women's basketball, such as Clark's most die-hard fans who only tune in when Clark is involved.

Television networks deployed short-term marketing strategies from January through April, such as “Kaitlin Clark goes after the scoring record” and “Oh yeah, other college players, too,” and the WNBA's commercial arm is using a similar tactic.

Could they take a fortnight away from boardroom edicts to maximise their chances of beating Japan, Belgium and Germany, surviving the medal rounds and returning to the top of the podium?

As with all the neglect of All-Star appearances, Best Actor nominations, and delicious Thai dinners for under $25, tell me who you'd cut to let Clark sit graciously at the end of the bench.

That’s not Sabrina Ionescu, who was one of the most celebrated post-college players in the country but was cut from the roster in 2021 and is now playing the best game of her career with the Liberty. That’s not Kalia Copper or Jackie Young, just because you’ve never seen them in a State Farm commercial.

The best basketball rebuttal is directed at Diana Taurasi, who warned Clark before the season that “reality was coming” in the WNBA, positioning her as a hater until that proved 100% correct.

Taurasi is 42 and has significantly slowed down on the defensive end of the court, shooting just 41.3 percent from the field and 34 percent from three-point range in the WNBA this season (Clark is at 37.3 percent and 32.7 percent, respectively).

But Taurasi has dedicated half her life to the U.S. program, and it would be best to tell the legend to step aside in pursuit of a historic sixth gold medal in order to let a newcomer take the spotlight.

(It's worth mentioning here that U.S. starting point guard Chelsea Gray hasn't played an official game in eight months because of a foot injury, and Clark was noted on Monday as the first guard to join the roster in case of injury.)

Clark was not removed from the roster because of fees, financial dissatisfaction or concerns about a vocal fan base, or even for almost any of those reasons. He was not removed because there are currently 12 players better than Clark.

And that's how it should be.