USA Basketball: 'Irresponsible' To Put Caitlin Clark On Olympics Roster Just For Exposure
On Tuesday, USA Basketball made official what everyone already knew: Caitlin Clark was not selected for the 2024 Summer Olympics roster.
Speaking to the Associated Press, selection committee chair Jen Rizzotti said the process had everything to do with picking the best players for the team and nothing to do with the popularity of the players.
"Here's the basketball criteria that we were given as a committee and how do we evaluate our players based on that?" Rizzotti said.
The AP reported that Rizzotti cited Clark's lack of international experience and noted that every player on the roster has senior national team experience, which Clark does not.
USA Basketball explains the decision to leave Caitlin Clark off the 2024 Summer Olympics roster, citing her inexperience in international competition.
(Getty Images)
She also noted that they felt some pressure to include Clark because of her massive popularity among American basketball fans, but said that choosing her for the team because of that would be "irresponsible."
"It would be irresponsible for us to talk about her in a way other than how she would impact the play of the team," Rizzotti said.
"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 [head coach] Cheryl Reeve."
To Clark's credit, she's been nothing but classy about being excluded from the team and has not complained or argued about the decision.
On Monday, she spoke about being excluded and talked about that being her goal in 2028.
"More than anything, I'm grateful to be in the Olympic selection pool," Clark said. "I just got out of college, and just to even be in that conversation is huge.
USA Basketball explains the decision to leave Caitlin Clark off the 2024 Summer Olympics roster, citing her inexperience in international competition.
(Getty Images)
"I think it just gives me something more to work for and shows me ways I can get better," she continued. "And, hopefully, when four years come around, I'll have another opportunity to try to be on that team."
Clark acknowledged that she knows her exclusion from the roster is a big talking point in the media and on social media, but she stressed that she hoped people would focus on the women that did make the team.
"I hope the conversations are about those 12 and them having the opportunity that a lot of people don't really get in their lifetime," she said. "I'll be rooting for them and I hope they go out and win gold. I know they will. They'll dominate."
A classy response from Clark, but the statements from USA Basketball still ring a bit hollow. The idea of having Clark on the roster instead of another player would hurt their chances of winning gold seems quite silly.
The US women's team has won gold in each of the past seven Olympic Games (dating back to 1996) and hasn't lost a single game in that stretch.
Now, perhaps, what they don't want to say is that Clark might be a distraction for the team that's expected to cruise to its eighth consecutive gold medal.
Or, possibly, that some WNBA players don't like Clark and her popularity among fans and that having her on the team might upset those players and, again, create a team chemistry issue.
That I might buy, although they would never come out and say that. None of that is Clark's fault, though, and if the goal is to develop US Women's Basketball, along with winning the gold medal, having Caitlin Clark on the team was a no-brainer decision.
Instead, they cited her inexperience and left her off the roster.