The People Who Didn’t Pick Caitlin Clark for the Olympics Explained Why, and It’s Truly Impressive

There is no bigger star in women’s basketball right now than Caitlin Clark. 

Seriously, ask five random people to name a women’s basketball player.

Then, after they say, “Caitlin Clark,” ask them to name another.

This isn’t because Clark is the best player in the WNBA. She’s doing quite well as a rookie leading her team in points per game, but that puts her at 15th in the league overall. Instead, it’s because of her incredible success in college basketball, and people’s hopes for the future.

In other words, her impact is powerful, but it’s still all about her past and her promise, not her present.

That’s why it was a tricky question whether Clark would be named to the U.S. Olympic women’s basketball team, set to play in Paris beginning next month. 

We actually learned from Clark herself that she wasn’t selected before the official roster was released, and people praised her response. But some commentators viewed the omission as a bad mistake.

Their argument is straightforward:

1. Millions of people will watch the Olympics, including many who are not traditional sports fans. 
2. So, if your primary goal is to grow the sport, wouldn’t it be a no-brainer to put Clark on the team?

Indeed it might be. The only problem, say the people who were actually in charge of selecting the team, is that it wasn’t their primary goal. Instead, their goal was to choose a team that they believed coach Cheryl Reeve could lead to win an eighth-straight gold medal for Team USA.

At this point in Clark’s career, they didn’t think she was ready for that. As selection committee chair Jen Rizzotti explained in an interview: 

It would be irresponsible for us to talk about [Clark] in a way other than how she would impact the play of the team. Because it wasn’t the purview of our committee to decide how many people would watch or how many people would root for the U.S. It was our purview to create the best team we could for Cheryl.

The main thing holding back Clark, Rizzotti and others explained, was simply that she doesn’t have experience at this level, and in the international game — which differs from both the NCAA and WNBA in rules and style.  

I can only imagine the pressure that the selection committee must have felt. The safe choice might well have been to add Clark as the 12th player, if only to silence the critics.

Besides, some might argue, how often is the last player on any team the deciding factor? 

But choosing Clark, if the committee legitimately thought she wasn’t the best player to add, might have created a problem for Reeve as the coach, because she would have had to contend with the same pressure from critics to make sure Clark got minutes on the court — again, all for the future growth of the game.

The more one thinks about it this way, the more impressive and brave the decision not to choose Clark becomes.

There’s an irony in this story. I started by saying that many people would have trouble naming another women’s basketball player besides Caitlin Clark, especially if they aren’t devoted basketball fans.

And yet, I’ve made it to this point without mentioning another woman who plays basketball.

Let’s clear that up right now, because the U.S. has most of the world’s best players, and this will be a fun team to watch. 

Of the 12 players selected, seven have already been to at least one prior Olympics, which means they’ve won at least one gold medal since the U.S. has won every gold going back to 1996. 

They include: Diana Taurasi (5 gold medal team appearances), Napheesa Collier (1), Kahleah Copper, Chelsea Gray (1), Brittney Griner (2), Sabrina Ionescu, Jewell Loyd (1), Kelsey Plum, Breanna Stewart (2), Alyssa Thomas, A’ja Wilson (1), and Jackie Young.

Young and Plum are new to the Olympic 5v5 team, but they each won gold medals in 3v3 basketball in 2020.

Beyond that, the U.S. has such depth that Clark is far from the only controversial player left off. Her teammate on the Indiana Fever, for example, Aliyah Boston, who was rookie of the year last year — and Arike Ogunbowale, who plays for the Dallas Wings and is the second-leading scorer in the league. 

Boston and Ogunbowale went to nearly every U.S. national team training camp, according to a report, but between her NCAA season and the WNBA, Clark simply hasn’t had that opportunity.

Most people are pretty confident she will have opportunities like that in the future, however. 

And while Clark won’t be on the U.S. Olympic team this summer trying to win an eighth straight gold medal, here’s hoping (speaking as an American and as a fan) that she’ll get the chance four years from now, when the U.S. team will hopefully be trying to win its ninth.