Caitlin Clark, whose long-range shooting and pinpoint accurate passing skills have made her the Steph Curry of women’s basketball, has been passed over for a spot on the 2024 Paris Olympics US women’s basketball team roster. Clark has responded to the snub with her usual grace.
“I’m excited for the girls that are on the team,” Clark told reporters Sunday. “I know it’s the most competitive team in the world and I know it could have gone either way — me being on the team or me not being on the team. I’m going to be rooting them on to win gold. I was a kid that grew up watching the Olympics, so it will be fun to watch them.
“Honestly, no disappointment. It just gives me something to work for; it’s a dream. Hopefully one day I can be there. I think it’s just a little more motivation. You remember that. Hopefully when four years comes back around, I can be there.”
Although exactly which player was selected in lieu of Clark is hard to discern, one suspects that 41-year-old Diana Taurasi is the one as this will be Taurasi’s sixth and presumably final Olympics. Another guard selected instead of Clark is Chelsea Gray, who has not played in a league game since last October when she suffered a foot injury.
A quick comparison of Taurasi and Clark’s season to date (June 9, 2024) stats suggests itself:
| Points Per Game | Rebounds | Assists | Steals | |
| Clark | 16.8 | 5.3 | 6.3 | 1.5 |
| Taurasi | 16.3 | 4.5 | 1.1 | 0.6 |
Before anyone raises the “but LeBron James is playing for the men’s team and he’s 39” argument, stop and think. Forget your opinion of James off the court and give the man his due. Not only is LeBron James unquestionably one of the greatest basketball players of all time, and in argument’s range as the single most outstanding player, he is still playing at an exceptionally high level. No one — no one — in the WNBA has a skill set comparable to his. Basketball junkies the world over are beside themselves in anticipation of what it will look like when James joins forces with Steph Curry and company in Paris. Caitlin Clark isn’t quite Steph Curry, but she is as close as it comes. And she won’t be on the court representing her country come July? That is three-dimensional stuck on stupid.
How many viewers who would have tuned in to see Clark play will now find something better to binge-watch during their TV time this summer? How many t-shirts and jerseys that would have sold by the literal boatload will now go unmade because Clark isn’t on the Olympic team? How many more examples do we need that the powers controlling women’s basketball are fundamentally inept at their job and unwilling to accept the best thing that has ever happened to their sport needs to be acknowledged instead of clinging to the notion that some magic potion will suddenly appear making the sports-conscious public acceptant of third-rate basketball? We have, in the presence of Caitlin Clark, a transcendent athlete. Whether she’s being elbow-checked to the floor or ignored in favor of players no one outside their immediate families cares about, we also have such blithering incompetence and blind allegiance to a three-prong operational philosophy — it didn’t work in the past, it’s not working now, and it will not work in the future — that the public will suddenly embrace women’s basketball as it was BC (Before Clark) you know the people making these decisions are Democrats without their having the slightest need to say so.
