In a scandal taking over the world of women’s basketball, the Olympic committee in charge of tapping the 12 person squad to represent Team USA at the 2024 Paris Olympics made the outrageous decision to leave phenom Caitlin Clark off the Olympic squad. Despite an era of dominance where Team USA is 54-0 with 7 gold medals since the 1996 Olympics and with the expectation that even a B team would win Gold for the Americans, the committee made the decision not to include Clark due to the fact that she would likely receive limited minutes on this year's squad.
The question at hand isn't whether Clark is deserving of a prominent role on the squad. Team USA is chock-full of experienced, veteran stars who have dominated together in the past decade. At this moment in time, Clark is not needed or deserving of a prominent role leading Team USA to Gold this summer.
However, as the undoubted future superstar of the league, (sorry Angel Reese that definitely isn't you), her inclusion into this year's team seemed like a lock a few weeks ago. That was before the liberal mainstream media and other woke members of the WNBA began a crusade to “put Clark in her place.” Across the league, anger was brewing amongst the league’s veteran stars, a majority of which are black, that a white girl was supposedly being gifted the title of future face of the league.
It started in a game against the Chicago Sky a few weeks ago when guard Chennedy Carter took a clearly vicious and after the whistle body check that sent Clark to the ground. Carter, who is widely known as a dirty player who has been released by multiple WNBA squads for being a reported locker room cancer, continued to stoke the fire by refusing to apologize or even acknowledge the situation in a post-game press conference and instead took the position many across the league did as well. Frustrated by the attention shown to Clark, Carter and others across the league portrayed it as a non-story or a welcome to the pros moment similar to how Michael
Jordan was treated entering the league.
Across the woke sports media world, commenters and players leaned heavily into racial tropes when discussing the Caitlin Clark situation. Instead of discussing similarities between Clark and other trailblazing stars in their rookie years such as Jordan, Kobe Bryant and Lebron James, the discussion was instead about the “privilege” Clark and other white players possess entering a league that supposedly has not given the same dues to black players. With the uptick in interest for women's basketball in recent years that coincides with Clark’s rise, the ridiculous narrative pushed by the WNBA of equity for black women players has taken front stage in a time where brand new fans to the sport want to enjoy a new mode of entertainment without having woke ideology rammed down their throats at every turn.
The cold, hard truth about the misguided belief that black players haven’t been afforded opportunities is broken down simply that the level of entertainment provided by the WNBA is not equal to the valuation the players put on themselves. It is not a race or sexuality discussion. The cry for “equity” with the NBA is absurd when you take into account the $10 billion in revenue the NBA does versus $60 million for the WNBA. At the end of the day, all sports whether women's, men's, college or professional is an entertainment business. The objective is to entertain the audience leading to revenue. Like it or not, entertainment is what Caitlin Clark provides better than any basketball player in the world at the moment.
Taking into account the entertainment aspect of sports, it is brand suicide what the powers at be in women's basketball are doing. In an era where social media is king, young players such as Clark, Angel Reese, Cameron Brink and others have brought substantial growth and attention to the sport through social media and marketing. It is absurd to forfeit that opportunity just to make a racial “gotcha” point to the media and fans by not including Caitlin Clark.
The smart play would have been to include Clark as an end of the bench player and utilize her following to boost the notoriety of the women's National team similar to how the WNBA and college basketball benefited. Instead, it appears the committee is pandering to the woke sector and likely irreparably dividing their sport in the process.
