When 2024 WNBA No. 1 pick Caitlin Clark was snubbed for the U.S. Olympic Women’s basketball team, selection committee members were immediately called haters.
Team head coach Cheryl Reeve, who isn’t a fan of all the Clark hype, has consistently disregarded questions concerning the matter. In fact, when asked if she regretted Clark being left off the team following last week’s WNBA All-Stars win over Team USA during All-Star Weekend, Reeve responded with an emphatic “NO.”
Who Made Decision To Keep Clark Off Team USA?
The committee, which is made up of South Carolina head coach and former U.S. coach Dawn Staley, LSU assistant and Minnesota Lynx legend Seimone Augustus, Old Dominion head coach and L.A. Sparks legend Delisha Milton-Jones, Connecticut Sun president Jennifer Rizzotti and WNBA head of league operations Bethany Donaphin, made the decision on Clark.
The decision in many ways seemed to be based on her being a rookie and having plenty of time to participate in future Olympics. And while that may be true, one member of the committee has since changed her tune.
Staley Singing A Different Tune About Clark
Speaking with NBC’s Mike Tirico, Staley, who led Team USA to the gold medal in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, had some interesting things to say concerning Clark.
“If we had to to do it all over again, the way that she’s playing, she would be in really high consideration of making the team because she is playing head and shoulders above a lot of people,” Staley said.
Staley also mentioned that she still stands by the committee’s decision to deny Clark an Olympic spot, because in Staley’s opinion, Clark has recently really come on since the team was chosen.
Prior to that, Clark went through the typical rookie struggles and at that time she probably didn’t deserve a spot based on her play.
Hearing Staley put it that way has to make one wonder what if Clark, who leads the WNBA in assists at 8.2 per game, should’ve been chosen. In fact, she’s already tallied more assists this season than 75 percent of the players in league history.
Not only that, but the Iowa Hawkeyes legend has also created more points than any other player in the league, when you combine the assists and her points (17.1) per game.
Did The League Miss The Mark?
When you consider the popularity and star power that Clark commands, she could have been chosen on that alone. No player has ever come into the league with the fanfare that she has, and the league has benefited greatly from her arrival.
The league has seen a huge jump in viewership, attendance and merchandise since Clark was drafted, and last week’s 11-year, $200 million per year media rights deal with Disney, Amazon Prime and NBC more than triples the current $60 million revenue budget the league is run off.
That’s why this would’ve been a perfect time to take Clark, the league’s biggest star, to Paris. It just seemed like the correct thing to do, and in many ways the committee dropped the ball.
Clark Is Better Than Team USA’s Guards
As pertains to the current guards on the Team USA roster, Clark is a more complete player than any of them from the standpoint of scoring and making her teammates around her better. While all of them are more experienced, none of them can do what she does in the combined areas of scoring and assisting, and Staley knows that, having seen it in back-to-back Final Four matchups with Clark and the Hawkeyes.
