USA TODAY Sports says Team USA airballs huge opportunity with Caitlin Clark
There’s plenty of opinions on Team USA Olympic women’s basketball leaving Caitlin Clark off its 12-player 2024 roster for the Paris Games.
Many feel it was a swing and a miss by the selection committee. Others don’t mind that Clark is finally going to get a chance to catch her breath for several weeks since she will not be headed to Paris.
USA TODAY Sports’ Christine Brennan was the first to break the news that Team USA had omitted Clark from its 2024 roster.
Brennan made it clear in her latest piece for USA TODAY Sports that she’s far from a fan of the decision by Team USA.
You can love Caitlin Clark. You can hate Caitlin Clark. You can love her Iowa roots. You can hate her Iowa roots. You can like her because she’s white, or dislike her because she’s white. Same goes for being straight. You can love the media’s fascination with her, or hate it. You can love the historic TV ratings and sell-out crowds, or hate them. You can love her interviews, or hate them.
But there’s one thing that we all know to be true:
With Caitlin Clark on the 2024 U.S. Olympic women’s basketball team, players who have been largely ignored by the sports media at every Summer Olympic Games that I’ve covered, which is every one since 1984, would have finally received the spotlight they deserve from a national and global audience.
Going into the Games, with national sensation Clark on the roster, I think the top storylines for the Americans in Paris (and quite a few international reporters) would have been these: 1. Simone Biles, 2. Katie Ledecky 3. Caitlin Clark. – Brennan, USA TODAY Sports.
Brennan’s biggest point of contention? Team USA missed a golden opportunity to attract millions of viewers to women’s basketball via Clark’s superstardom and pull.
But Clark isn’t coming to Paris, unless someone withdraws or is injured. Clark won’t be there to bring the casual sports fan who fell in love with her at Iowa and now knows the difference between ION and Prime to finally and rightfully watch Diana Taurasi and Jackie Young at the Olympics.
She won’t be there, so all those fans won’t be there, because they’re never there. And one could only have imagined the global appeal of Clark once writers and reporters from around the world dropped in and watched a few logo 3s fall from the sky and a few hundred more autographs be recorded for posterity. Perhaps little girls in Europe and Africa would have been just as entranced as girls in America are. That’s not happening anymore, and it’s all on USA Basketball, whose mission statement fascinatingly includes “promoting, growing and elevating the game at all levels.” (Seems to be Caitlin Clark’s job description these days.)
Because this great opportunity to publicize international women’s basketball has been eliminated, the vast majority of broadcasters and reporters will be able to focus as they always have on the swimmers and gymnasts and runners, and leave the U.S. women’s basketball team alone. – Brennan, USA TODAY Sports.
Brennan isn’t alone in that viewpoint. Plenty of fans were sharing that same stance when the news began to break that Clark hadn’t been selected to the 2024 Team USA Olympic women’s basketball roster.
The reported 12-player roster is a talented, experience-laden roster. And, again, it’s not the worst thing in the world for Clark to finally get to rest and recuperate from nonstop basketball dating back to last October.
Still, a decision like this from Team USA was always going to be met with some serious blowback given Clark’s popularity.
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