Caitlin Clark, like 99.99 p.c of People this summer season, won’t be a part of the 2024 US ladies’s Olympic basketball workforce. Formally, the workforce can be introduced on Sunday, however in accordance with studies and Clark herself, she didn’t make the 12-woman roster.
In contrast to the remainder of us watching, nevertheless, Clark possesses world-class taking pictures vary, beautiful passing imaginative and prescient, and a record-setting scoring potential. These attributes have made her the No. 1 decide on this 12 months’s WNBA draft and the most-watched ladies’s basketball participant on the planet. Her video games have set viewership and ticket gross sales information.
With all of the expertise, hype, and a spotlight, Clark staying dwelling this summer season is a shock to many. Hundreds of thousands of individuals have been advised that Clark is arguably the very best ladies’s participant on this planet and inarguably its greatest star, and now she will not be a 2024 Olympian. Some critics are even saying that is the worst basketball resolution the US has ever made.
Clark herself congratulated the Olympic squad, stated it’s essentially the most troublesome workforce to make, and that she hopes to be in Los Angeles in 2028. “I am excited for the women which might be on the workforce,” Clark stated this weekend after an Indiana Fever observe. “I used to be a child that grew up watching the Olympics. It will be enjoyable to look at them.”
In contrast to roster picks up to now, Clark not making the minimize has triggered an inflammatory response, with some calling into query the integrity of the ladies who made it as an alternative of her and even the integrity of the US. These excessive reactions stem from a harmful and more and more well-liked subtext about Caitlin Clark’s greatness, one which paints Clark as a transcendent star and her friends as terminally jealous people. The wild gist: Clark must be protected against her fellow gamers.
It’s change into clear that these Caitlin Clark followers aren’t all that curious about ladies’s basketball and even Clark herself however, fairly, look like deeply invested in pulling the intense younger basketball star right into a tradition conflict that she doesn’t appear all that curious about being part of.
Caitlin Clark’s Olympic omission is riling up poisonous followers
Over the previous couple of years, the rise of Caitlin Clark has been one of many greatest tales in sports activities. Clark’s recreation — prolific scoring, deep taking pictures vary, full-court passes — is thrilling to look at. Sports activities media has even created the time period “the Caitlin Clark impact” to consult with the ticket gross sales and hundreds of thousands in TV viewership that Clark is liable for. In every single place Clark performs, whether or not it’s the College of Iowa, her alma mater, or the Indiana Fever, her present WNBA workforce, folks need to see her recreation.
For girls’s basketball, a sport that’s been ignored and overshadowed by its male counterpart, the eye paid to Clark has been an achievement. Her video games draw the form of viewership that the NBA does, and similar goes for title recognition. I’d wager that extra folks would be capable to title Caitlin Clark than final 12 months’s NBA rookie of the 12 months (Victor Wembanyama).
Whereas that spotlight has raised ladies’s basketball’s profile, it’s additionally delivered to gentle some extraordinarily bizarre, unsavory habits from her followers and the media.
Final 12 months, within the 2023 Nationwide Championship, Angel Reese was the topic of a nationwide dialog about her conduct after she taunted Clark within the ultimate minutes — one thing Clark had achieved to her opponents all through her event run. As an alternative of being seen as enjoyable or assured (as Clark’s antics had been portrayed by media and basketball followers) Reese’s chaff was dubbed “classless” or, as Keith Olbermann, a former ESPN anchor tweeted, “a fucking fool.” Because the pile-on grew and Reese discovered herself in the course of a nationwide dialog about her character, Clark went to bat for her, reminding the fan base: “I get to play this recreation and have emotion and put on it on my sleeves, and so does everybody else … I don’t suppose Angel needs to be criticized in any respect.”
Clark is getting at a number of issues right here. For one, there’s the double normal of how she was handled by followers versus how her Black friends are handled, but in addition the deeply associated concept that she warrants some form of added benevolence that different gamers don’t. As Clark has moved to the WNBA, this narrative that Clark wants safety has solely grown.
Clark’s fellow WNBA gamers are being portrayed within the media as petty and jealous of her accomplishments. Aliyah Boston, Clark’s teammate and reigning WNBA rookie of the 12 months, has restricted her social media after receiving hate from followers on-line for underperforming. Earlier this month, Chicago Sky participant Chennedy Carter fouled Clark with a shoulder test that the WNBA later upgraded to a extra severe foul. Clark stated that the foul was within the warmth of the second and that there’s no want for an apology.
Nonetheless, the foul spurred an editorial from the Chicago Tribune and a WNBA inquiry from a sitting member of Congress. Extra alarming is that Carter and her Sky teammates stated they had been stalked and harassed by a person outdoors a workforce resort in Washington, DC, and wanted safety to deal with the scenario. Clearly, not all of Clark’s followers are of the stalker selection, however it’s not precisely a shock that somebody would harass the Sky workforce so long as outstanding folks hold pushing the false narrative that Clark wants safety from jealous gamers — even when Clark herself has quashed that concept a number of instances.
Clark’s prominence and the dialog surrounding her have just lately caught the eye of right-wing personalities, like former Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley. Haley tweeted about Clark’s Olympic omission, implying that the ladies on the US workforce weren’t the very best US gamers and that Clark had been shortchanged: “I believe the Olympic choice committee needs to be requested: Do we wish the very best workforce to signify our nation or not?”
The notion that the US isn’t nearly as good because it was once and the folks representing the US — the workforce is predominantly Black and consists of LGBTQ gamers — aren’t its finest aligns with political messages that Haley used on the marketing campaign path to enchantment to voters. It appears Haley is extra curious about positioning Clark’s basketball profession as a tradition conflict and fascinating her base than she is invested in Clark as a participant. Six months in the past, throughout a marketing campaign cease that doubled as a Hawkeyes tailgate in Coralville, Iowa, Haley referred to Clark as Kaitlan Collins, who is definitely a CNN anchor.
Opposite to Haley’s opinion, Clark thinks the Olympic workforce is America’s finest. “It’s essentially the most aggressive workforce on this planet … I’m going to be rooting for them to win gold,” Clark stated in a huddle with reporters on June 9.
The argument for Caitlin making the Olympic workforce
The plain query surrounding Clark’s omission from the workforce is whether or not or not she was adequate to make it. However that doesn’t include a transparent reply, primarily as a result of the standards for making Group USA has lengthy been subjective and generally relentlessly opaque.
The choice committee has, lately, made some head-scratching choices.
Again in 2016, Candace Parker — a future Corridor-of-Famer and one of many sport’s biggest gamers — was left off the workforce. Parker, who was 30 in 2016, was one the very best gamers on this planet and helped the US win gold in 2008 and 2012. She has stated that she thinks UConn’s Geno Auriemma, who was teaching the nationwide workforce on the time, didn’t need her on the workforce. Breanna Stewart, a latest graduate who Auriemma had coached at UConn, was the one participant beneath the age of 25 taken.
Then in 2021 (the Olympics had been delayed due to the pandemic), Nneka Ogwumike was left off. Ogwumike, a perennial all-star and MVP (like Parker), was additionally 30 on the time. Daybreak Staley, the present coach at South Carolina and nationwide coach on the time, cited uncertainty over a knee harm as the rationale Ogwumike was not chosen.
The teachings from these previous two Olympic snubs is that it’s fairly clear that Group USA isn’t the 12 “finest” gamers and that there’s priority for taking a youthful participant over a confirmed participant of their prime. Group USA may even err on the aspect of warning on the subject of accidents.
These arguments might need labored in Clark’s favor. She’s younger (like Stewart was in 2016) and is popping in an excellent rookie season. Clark is averaging 16.8 factors per recreation, 5.3 rebounds per recreation, and 6.3 assists per recreation within the WNBA. She ranks fourth on the subject of the league’s leaders in assists per recreation and performs level guard, a place that the US isn’t terribly deep in — Angel Reese and Cameron Brink, Clark’s fellow rookies, are additionally having good seasons however play front-court positions the place the US is loaded. Brink made the 3×3 Olympic basketball workforce.
Chelsea Grey, a 2020 Olympic gold medalist and level guard for the Las Vegas Aces, is on the 2024 workforce. She hasn’t performed within the WNBA this 12 months after a foot harm stored her out of the WNBA finals final 12 months. Grey and Clark play the identical place. Additional, Diana Taurasi — a five-time ladies’s basketball gold medalist — may even be going to Paris regardless of averaging fewer factors, rebounds, and assists than Clark this season.
The issue is, whilst you might make an argument that Grey and Taurasi ought to have been left off rather than Clark, there are additionally a few gamers — 2020 Olympic gold medalist Skylar Diggins Smith and WNBA scoring extraordinaire Arike Ogunbowale — who’re having higher seasons than Clark on this second who additionally aren’t going. Clark’s recreation, whereas good, is marred by her 5.6 turnovers per recreation and lack of toughness on protection.
Maybe essentially the most fascinating argument in all of that is that this complete kerfuffle is over a minuscule quantity of minutes on the top of the bench.
Whether or not or not it’s Taurasi, Grey, or Clark, the backup level guard will seemingly be the final spot referred to as to play. That theoretical lack of minutes was truly an element, in accordance with two nameless USA Basketball sources who spoke to USA At the moment. They advised the paper that the “concern over how Clark’s hundreds of thousands of followers would react to what would seemingly be restricted enjoying time on a stacked roster was an element within the resolution making.”
If that reporting is to be believed, then there’s some merciless symmetry that Clark’s followers — particularly the poisonous ones — might have been a part of the choice course of in maintaining her off the roster. Leaving Clark off the workforce due to an anticipated backlash to meager minutes looks like a kind of head-scratching, less-than-transparent causes.
In the end, the one individual immediately affected by Caitlin Clark’s Olympic omission is Clark, and she or he isn’t letting 2024’s disappointment have an effect on her future. “It is a dream. I believe it is just a bit extra motivation,” she advised reporters this weekend. “You keep in mind that. Hopefully, when 4 years comes round, I will be there.”
