By For the better part of the past two months, the most discussion of the United States women’s basketball team heading into the 2024 Paris Olympics has revolved around a player not even on the roster.
When Team USA’s collection of 12 players was unveiled on June 11, there was perhaps no absence more notable than Indiana Fever rookie guard Caitlin Clark.
The 22-year-old Clark has been a catalyst for the increased interest nationally in women’s basketball. She was a two-time national college player of the year at Iowa, where she led the Hawkeyes to back-to-back NCAA championship games and became the leading scorer in Division I history, men’s or women’s, with a fluid, aesthetically pleasing game that made her something of a cross between Steph Curry and Pete Maravich.
REQUIRED READING: Follow USA TODAY Sports’ coverage of the 2024 Paris Olympics
Despite being the No. 1 pick in the 2024 WNBA Draft and routinely attracting sellout crowds wherever the Fever played, Clark was not among those selected for Team USA for the Paris Games.
According to one of the people tasked with putting that team together, it’s a decision that perhaps would have gone differently had it been made now.
Dawn Staley on Caitlin Clark
While appearing on NBC Sunday as part of the network’s basketball coverage of the Olympics, South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley, a member of the selection committee that constructed the Team USA roster, said Clark would have been under “really high consideration” to make the team “if we had to do it all over again.”
“As a committee member, you’re charged with putting together the best team of players, the best talent,” Staley said to NBC’s Mike Tirico. “Caitlin is just a rookie in the WNBA and wasn’t playing bad, but wasn’t playing like she’s playing now. If we had to do it all over again, with the way she’s playing, she would be in really high consideration of making the team because she’s playing head and shoulders above a lot of people. She’s shooting the ball extremely well. She’s an elite passer. She’s just got a great basketball IQ. And she’s a little more seasoned in the pro game than she was two months ago.”
Staley’s comment came on the eve of Team USA’s Olympic opener Monday against Japan.
Clark faced off against Staley’s South Carolina team twice in her final two college seasons, with both meetings coming in the Final Four — a 77-73 victory in the 2023 national semifinals and an 87-75 loss against the Gamecocks in the NCAA championship game in April.
Is Caitlin Clark going to the Olympics?
Clark was not among the 12 players on the Team USA roster for the 2024 Paris Olympics.
The Americans will be vying for their eighth-consecutive gold medal.
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Why isn’t Caitlin Clark on the Olympic team?
For all Clark has done to increase the visibility of women’s basketball and for exciting as she is as a player, her absence from the team was justifiable when the roster was finalized in June.
Her lack of professional experience would have made her an outlier on a loaded Team USA roster. Each of the 12 players on Team USA has made at least two WNBA all-star games (Clark, for her part, was a WNBA all-star in her first season.) At 22 years old, she would have been by far the greenest player on the squad, as New York Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu is the youngest player on the U.S. roster, at 26 years old.
Positionally, there wasn’t room, either, as six of the 12 Olympic inclusions are guards who, like Clark, are capable lead ball-handlers. Clark may very well not even be the biggest snub for Team USA. Dallas Wings guard Arike Ogunbowale, the WNBA’s second-leading scorer at the time the roster was finalized, also didn’t make the team.
At the time the roster was finalized, Clark was struggling with certain facets of her transition to the WNBA 13 games into her professional career. She was averaging an impressive 16.8 points, 5.3 rebounds and 6.3 assists per game, but she was regularly plagued by turnovers, averaging a WNBA-high 5.6 per game, and was shooting just 33% from 3-point range, an underwhelming mark for a player whose offensive game is predicated on shooting from distance.
Additionally, she was invited to the national team camp in April, where she could have made an impression on key decision-makers, but she understandably wasn’t able to attend, as it coincided with Iowa’s appearance in the Final Four.
For her part, Clark was publicly accepting of her exclusion from the roster.
“I’m excited for the girls that are on the team,” Clark said to reporters on June 9. “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.”
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Caitlin Clark stats
As Staley noted, Clark’s play has blossomed over the past month, after the Team USA roster was publicly unveiled. Like many talented rookies, Clark grew increasingly comfortable at the next level, with her numbers backing that up.
She’s currently leading all WNBA players in assists per game, with 8.2, and played a role in helping lead the WNBA All-Stars to a 117-109 victory against Team USA in the WNBA All-Star Game on July 20, dishing out a game-high 10 assists in the win.
Over the Fever’s past 12 games — and not including her performance in the WNBA All-Star Game — Clark is averaging 18.8 points, 10.8 assists, 6.9 rebounds and 1.6 steals per game, though her turnovers (5.7 per game) and 3-point shooting (34.3%) have only improved so much. Her 19 assists in a July 17 loss to Ogunbowale and the Wings were the most by a player in a game in WNBA history.
For the season, Clark is averaging 17.1 points, 8.2 assists, 5.8 rebounds, 1.5 steals and 5.6 turnovers per game while shooting 40.5% from the field and 32.7% from 3.
