BenFred: Hey, maybe we weren't crazy for thinking Caitlin Clark should have made Team USA (2024)

The U.S. women’s basketball team is pursuing its next gold medal, and if you’re able to get to France to see it, it sounds like you can score great tickets on the cheap.

New York Times reporter Juliet Macur, who is on assignment covering the Paris Games, reported this week that front-row tickets for Sunday’s game between the U.S. and Germany can be purchased for affordable general-admission prices.

Maybe passing on a layup opportunity to put superstar Caitlin Clark on the team wasn’t such a great decision after all. Those of us who questioned it in real time were shrugged off as women’s basketball haters or poor students of the game. Now, maybe not so much.

Check out this recent quote from selection committee member and legendary South Carolina women’s coach Dawn Staley to NBC, where she attempted, I think, to suggest that Clark would be a lot more obvious of a Team USA selection had the process happened ... two months later?

“Caitlin is just a rookie in the WNBA and wasn’t playing bad, but wasn’t playing like she’s playing now,” Staley recently told NBC during a televised interview in Paris.

The fact folks in Paris are talking about Clark says a lot, doesn’t it?

And sorry, Coach Staley, but I’m having a hard time buying the notion that 13 more WNBA games suddenly opened sharp basketball eyes to Clark’s skills.

No, this sounds a lot more like Team USA beginning to admit the so-called obvious call of leaving Clark off the team wasn’t as obvious as some made it seem. Maybe, just maybe, Team USA should have gone the other way, embracing Clark’s momentum as her star turn continues. A lot more people would be watching (and attending) games if so.

“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,” Staley said to NBC. “She’s shooting the ball extremely well. She’s an elite passer. She’s got a great basketball IQ. And she’s a little more seasoned in the pro game than she was two months ago.”

Apparently the 13 WNBA games Clark played between the roster announcement and the WNBA’s summer break could have made a big difference, more than, you know, Clark’s track record of being college basketball’s back-to-back player of the year before becoming the WNBA’s No. 1 draft pick.

Since Team USA passed on her, she’s made the choice look even more questionable. She’s averaged 18 points, 10.4 assists, 6.7 rebounds and a steal and a half per game in WNBA play since the roster was officially announced. As a rookie, she leads the WNBA in assists (by a margin of 31 assists!) while ranking third in 3-pointers made and seventh in points scored (17.1 per game). Clark also is a top-10 WNBA player in creating free-throw attempts and making them (89.1 percent). She’s been a two-time rookie of the month. She’s a WNBA All-Star who helped her team defeat Team USA in an exhibition game. She secured a spot in WNBA history as the fastest rookie to total 400 points and 200 assists in 26 games.

What got ignored by too many in the June debate about Clark being left off the roster, along with common sense and a general feel for how to supersize the marketing of a team in a unique time and place, was that her absence from Team USA’s tryouts, an often-cited reason she was left off, occurred because the timing of them directly clashed with Clark leading her Iowa team to back-to-back Final Fours. Did people really want her to skip Iowa’s postseason play to go try out? I don’t think so. I think it was a convenient excuse. It’s aged poorly.

In the end, in terms of overall outcome, hopefully it won’t matter. That’s how dominant Team USA tends to be in the Olympics. The team is chasing its eighth consecutive gold medal. Thursday’s 87-74 defeat of Belgium increased Team USA’s active Olympic winning streak to 57 games. A spot in the quarterfinals is secured, and anything other than an eighth straight gold medal would be a big disappointment.

But Team USA made just four of its 20 attempted 3-pointers in its lopsided opening defeat of Japan. And only five threes went in against a tough Belgium opponent as the team’s backcourt members underperformed. So, no, you are not crazy if you thought Clark could have helped this team, and you better believe selling tickets would not have been a problem if she was.