Caitlin Clark with family (Photo via CAITLIN CLARK/INSTAGRAM)
WNBA rookie phenom Caitlin Clark will not be a member of USA Basketball’s roster for the women’s Olympic basketball team that will compete in Paris this summer.
Following a 30-point effort that featured seven three-pointers in the Indiana Fever’s victory over the Washington Mystics on Friday, the 22-year-old expressed her excitement for the team’s players and said she would be “rooting them on to win gold.”
“I was a kid that grew up watching the Olympics, so yeah, it’ll be fun to watch them,” Clark said.
Over the weekend, Caitlin’s mother, Anne Nizzi-Clark, shared a pair of social media posts on X talking about the opportunity USA Basketball is missing by leaving her daughter off the roster.
Reposting a tweet that said: “USA Basketball’s timing is terrible. Clark just made seven 3’s and scored 30 in front of the largest WNBA crowd in 17 years: 20,333 in DC, more than double the crowd Chicago drew the night before in the same arena.”
The follow-up post was a report from Christine Brennan saying the Indiana Fever rookie was left off the team.
“Caitlin Clark, the biggest name in women’s basketball who has electrified record crowds while being named WNBA rookie of the month, has been left off the 2024 US Olympic women’s basketball team roster.”
The roster is expected to include WNBA stars and past Olympic champions Brittney Griner, Diana Taurasi, Breanna Stewart, and nine others.
With Caitlin Clark’s reputation as one of the greatest and most well-liked rookies in WNBA history, her rejection garnered harsh criticism. Before being selected by the Indiana Fever with the first overall pick this year, she was a standout player at Iowa.
After concluding her career at Iowa and joining the Fever for the WNBA, she hardly had any time off; however, now that she is not competing in the Olympics, she will at last have some free time.
Indiana Fever Head Coach ‘Disappointed’ Caitlin Clark Missed USA Roster
Head coach Christie Sides and Caitlin Clark(Photo by Greg Fiume/Getty Images)
It created quite a fuss when USA Basketball decided not to include Indiana Fever rookie Caitlin Clark on its Olympic roster last week. Christie Sides, the head coach, offered her own perspective on the matter on Sunday.
“A little disappointed, of course. She’s my player,” she told reporters. “That’s the hardest team in the world to make. That is a tough team. She’s young, she’s doing to have so many opportunities in the future.
Sides added that Clark was using the situation as motivation.
“We talked actually on the bus. She got the call on the bus, and she texted me to let me know. I just tried to keep her spirits up. The thing she said was, ‘Hey coach, they woke a monster,’ which I thought was awesome.”
Clark is averaging 16.8 points, 6.3 assists, and 5.3 rebounds per game in her first 12 WNBA games via ESPN.com.
