The Caitlyn Clark Olympic Snub "Controversy", Explained and Exposed

Basically, she doesn't give the team their best chance of winning

Caitlyn Clark, the highest scoring player in Women’s College Basketball history, and the largest draw of new fans and attention to women’s basketball in history, has been left off of the USA Women’s Basketball Olympic team, according to reports. And like most things in America, it immediately turned into a political issue by the most hysterical among us.

According to them, the “snub” was apparently due to wokeism, reverse racism, or some other socially political hot button issue, due to the fact that Clark is white and the center of attention. Well, for starters, there are four really good white players that were selected for the team, so it doesn’t seem like race is the reason.

She is an historically good player, and has garnered tons of attention, so perhaps there is an element of jealously, or a desire to put her in her place? I suppose it’s possible. But the answer is likely very simple: objectively, Clark just isn’t quite ready yet. And that’s completely normal.

Clark competed against top-notch competition during her college career while putting up gaudy record-breaking statistics. She quickly came on the scene as a freshman and played at an ultra-high level for her full four-year college career. She’s obviously a good player, and could not have done anymore to prove herself at the collegiate level.

However, playing well professionally and internationally is a different animal and the best players rarely enter this phase of their careers playing at the same elite level they did in their collegiate phase. It’s normal for even the best rookies to struggle while they learn how to adjust to facing the world’s best players day in and day out. There are examples of this across the spectrum of sports and genders.

Peyton Manning is a great example of someone that came directly out of college widely projected to be a professional star, struggled in their first season, but adjusted and exceeded everyone’s expectations, which were already very high. He’s now understood to be a Hall of Fame caliber football player. But no one would have wanted him on the national team in the Olympics if they were held during or just after his first season. (Yes, I know there is no Olympic American football competition, just using this as an example).

There’s plenty more examples like this. It’s extremely difficult to find counter examples of professional rookies excelling at the same high level they did in college. And Caitlyn Clark is not one of these rare exceptions. She’s going through the same growing pains than hundreds of other future stars went through in the same situation.

The Timing

Regardless of how she’s been performing this year, the fact is the team that was selected has been prepping and playing together for the same coach already for at least two years, in training camps and other organized national tournaments. Just inserting Clark into that mix because of her college accomplishments makes little sense.

If she had entered the WNBA draft last year and been playing professionally for a year, and had a stellar season with few signs of struggle to adjust, it would have made more sense to include her. But she opted to go to college for another year so that she was only 12 games into her professional career by the time they chose the team. And even if she had played well enough during this abbreviated time, it would be tough to justify messing with the chemistry of the current team or taking one of them off the roster.

It just wasn’t the right time. She’ll have an opportunity to make future Olympic rosters. She’ll probably get at least two, probably three, maybe even more, under her belt by the time she retires. That’s about the most anyone can hope for. Plus, if there is an injury and someone on the current roster needs to be replaced, it would seem that she’d be in the mix to be that replacement.

The Stats

The assumption by many of the critics of this choice is that Clark is still a dominating player, and is in the elite of the WNBA. But as of right now, this simply isn’t the case. She’s been pretty good, but has struggled in her first professional season so far. This is to be expected of a rookie, and there’s little doubt she will eventually become a major impact player. But right now, she needs to learn, and needs some seasoning to be reliably effective.

She’s currently 14th in the league in scoring, which is respectable. She’s also 13th in minutes played and 17th in FG’s attempted, so she’s bound to get some level of respectable points with that many tries at scoring.

But she has major weaknesses, one being her FG percentage, which is 37.3% and 35th in the league. She's not shooting the ball near as effectively as she did in college, where she shot 46.2%, which is an incredible number. Some drop off would be expected after jumping to the next level of competition, but a full 10 percentage point is a problem.

And if you think this is because she takes a lot of 3s, you’d be somewhat correct, but even her 3-point shooting has been disappointing so far at 32.7%, 23rd in the league. This is after shooting 38% in her college career. This amount of a drop off is actually reasonable for 3-point shooting, but this means that her 2-point shooting has cratered. She made over 55% of her 2-point field goal attempts in college, and now she’s at 45% from 2-point range.

She is third in assists per game, which is very impressive. But is it worthy of an automatic Olympic bid? Hardly. Especially when you take into account her turnovers. She literally leads the league in turnovers at 5.6 per game. This practically makes her a net liability when she’s on the court, regardless of how many points she scores.

The fact is that she just is not experienced enough to be the main guard of the USA basketball team, which is expected to win gold this year. To put her on the team at this moment is a big risk, and makes winning the gold medal more difficult. By choosing her for the team, you’d be saying thar her inexperience, poor shooting, and high turnover numbers are worth the risk. But why? Why not go with the more experienced, more elite-level players when attempting to win gold?

Potential isn’t everything

Some might answer by saying that her potential outweighs these risks. But we really should consider that she may not end up being the elite playing everyone expects her to be. There are many more examples of a player’s expected potential not working out than otherwise. Faced with the high levels of defensive play that exist at the professional and international level, she may not ever shoot nearly as well as she did in college. Maybe she’ll end up with nagging injuries that stunts her career. No one can say. That’s why it’s worth seeing how she does after playing multiple seasons.

One only needs to look at the person she surpassed as the NCAA Women’s Basketball scoring leader for a great example of a potential trajectory to Clark’s career: Kelsey Plum.

Plum’s college career looks similar to Clark’s, although Clark started off better as a freshman and was therefore more consistent throughout her whole college career. Plum had a very good freshman season, but ramped up her accomplishments more from her first year to her last. Plum even shot better than Clark did in her senior year, over 50% from the field overall. She scored less points, but also took quite a bit fewer shots than Clark.

Plum ended her college career as the number one all time collegiate scorer, and was chosen first in the WNBA draft, same as Clark. Plum’s first five seasons were not stellar, but perhaps upper-level serviceable. She played a significant number of minutes and put up solid numbers, but nothing really stood out. It wasn’t until the last two seasons in 2022 and 2023 where she really started standing out as one of the league’s best players. After not being selected for an USA Olympic team previously, she’s now being rewarded with a slot in 2024.

When the 2028 team is being picked, it is to be expected that Clark, with 4 years of professional seasoning and time in training camps, will be chosen. It’s not a guarantee of course. But, much like in the case of the previous collegiate scoring record-holder, Plum, adjusting to the professional level is not easy, and it can take years to break through. Clark seemingly has the skills and drive to do it. We should let her career play out and enjoy it in the meantime.

The Publicity

Many of Clark’s supporters will also point out the attention and publicity that Clark has brought to women’s basketball, and that based on this, it should be a no-brainer to include Clark on the team. Her presence will bring world-wide attention to the team, possibly creating more awareness and money-making opportunities to the sport.

But this puts not only the team at a potential disadvantage, but Clark and the women’s game in general. The expectations in this situation would be unfairly high for Clark. She’s obviously still adjusting to the next level of play after only 12 games. It’s exceedingly possible that she would struggle mightily in international play, and potentially hardly even get any playing time.

Then the team would be under constant scrutiny and criticism to play Clark when she’s obviously not ready, which would not make any sense.

If she ends up shooting poorly and turning the ball over at high rates, just as she’s currently doing in the WNBA, this would be disappointing to all the fans out there hoping for a Clark showcase. If they kept playing her despite her struggles, it would reflect poorly on the coaches and women’s basketball in general and likely destroy some of the good will and publicity that she’s achieved for the sport during her collegiate career. It would bring more ridicule than raves from a worldwide audience. It wouldn’t be fair to her, the sport, or the other women on the team to force such a situation into reality.

The goal of the Olympic team is to win the gold medal, period. It’s not to sell more tickets or increase awareness. By putting the best possible team out on the floor and increasing the chances of winning gold, the team and the sport are the best possible ambassadors for the sport.

The goal of the WNBA teams is to win championships which is analogous to winning gold. But the mechanism for the teams to do this are drastically different. WNBA teams are limited to picking the available players in the draft and free agency. The mechanism for the Olympic team to win is by taking their pick of anyone in the league that wants to be on the team, which is essentially everyone in the league.

This allows the Olympic team a lot of leeway. They have a diverse array of skills and experience from which to choose to mold the best team possible. Leaving off someone with very little experience that is not currently dominating the league is generally an easy choice in this situation.

And WNBA teams are also somewhat motivated by sales and attention as well. In Clark’s case, she has the skill set to match her attention. In some cases a team might choose the biggest draw if other aspects they are seeking are equal, or almost equal. But this is not something that is even on the radar of the Olympic team. They go with the best possible chance of winning and nothing else.

The bottom line is that this was the obviously correct decision. Anything other than this would have been suspect and caused more headaches than the criticisms currently being hurled at the Olympic team decision makers.

The hystericals among us need to calm it down. This is not an example of wokeness gone wild. It’s smart basketball.