Now that the dust has settled and Caitlin Clark has officially been removed from the U.S. women’s basketball team for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, two things have become clear.
First of all, it would be foolish to say that fans won’t watch the U.S. team play despite this.
Because it’s not just Caitlin Clark and her that’s growing the game and audience of women’s basketball, but rather women’s basketball as a whole, which has been a long, hard process over the past 20 years that was suddenly expedited by Clark, but isn’t 100% dependent on her.
Love her or hate her, Chicago Sky forward Angel Reese — Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes’ LSU nemesis for the past two years — spoke some truth when she claimed credit for her role in women’s basketball’s recent coming-of-age story.
Again, love her or hate her, her play speaks for itself, especially since she became the first 2024 freshman to reach 100 points and 100 rebounds. What she accomplished at LSU drew a lot of attention from the sports world; LA Sparks forward Cameron Brink and UConn guard Paige Bueckers also drew attention, albeit on a slightly smaller scale, in their own way.
But this is just a compilation of what WNBA legends have done for the sport in recent years: Clark, Reese, Brink and Bueckers have helped build on the foundations laid by players like Diana Taurasi and A’ja Wilson (who will be in Paris next month).
In fact, the U.S. women’s basketball team has won a gold medal in every Olympic Games since 1992. Given what rookies have brought to the basketball world in recent years, it would be completely misguided to say that no one would want to see the team without Clark.
Clarke and these other rookies are helping to draw attention, but they aren’t necessarily needed to do so: Social media sites are exploding with new coverage of WNBA happenings, and users are giving the WNBA just as much attention as they give the NBA.
An ESPN report for 2023, even before the younger generation enters the league, projected viewership would be up 21 percent over the 2023 season, with average attendance at about 7,000, the highest since 2018.
Now, of course, the WNBA revealed that the league “recorded its largest attendance in 26 years and its highest-ever ratings across ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, CBS, ION and NBA TV networks” last May, but these fans are turning on the TV to see more than just Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese.
While the younger generation has certainly brought a new wave of attention, the game’s stars are also garnering attention, and the game would still be entertaining to watch with or without them.
With Clarke or not, this national team will undoubtedly draw its biggest fan base ever from around the world, as a lot can change in four years, from the state of women’s basketball during the 2020 Olympics to today as the 2024 Olympics approaches.
But the second thing Clark’s exclusion makes clear is that there will be significantly fewer fans watching Team USA play now that Clark is not on the team.
Whether or not she should be on the team — the rookie ranks 17th in the league in points per game, fourth in assists per game and sixth in three-pointers per game — Caitlin Clark is the biggest name in women’s sports right now.
For example, according to Bullets Forever, Clark and her Indiana Fever drew more than 20,000 fans to their game against the winless Washington Mystics on June 7, setting the largest attendance for a WNBA regular season game since 1999 and the largest attendance for a league game since 2007, despite both teams sitting at the bottom of the league standings.
This is just one example of Clarke’s growing interest in the league.
I understand wanting to grow women’s basketball, but to do that, it needs to grow beyond the WNBA.
But Jen Rizzotti, chair of the U.S. women’s national basketball committee, said Clark’s possible boost in jersey sales and television viewership, which would help expand women’s basketball fan base around the world, would not be a reason to remove her from the team.
“There are a lot of guys who are following women’s basketball,” Rizzotti said, “and I hope that the journey this team goes on and the unprecedented success they’ve had will be a story that people will want to tune into.”
But that success is undoubtedly due to Clarke, so what’s the harm in having her on the team and keeping her in the spotlight?
Certainly, as I said earlier, Clark isn’t solely responsible for this success that Rizzotti speaks of. But Clark is a huge figure. To suddenly take Clark out of the equation would be akin to Steve Jobs and Apple. Jobs didn’t build this tech giant alone, but it wouldn’t have happened without him. Firing and removing him in 1985 would have stunted its potential growth.
Some have suggested Clark is too young and inexperienced to make the Olympic team, but his experience in leading the Iowa Hokies to back-to-back NCAA national championship runner-up finishes completely outweighs that.
It could be argued that fans will be upset about Clarke’s limited playing time on a team rich with talent, but anger over the few minutes he can still shine is better than not being able to play at all, especially as fans are now blaming the committee for his oversight and are therefore likely to boycott games next month.
Giving Clark an opportunity on the biggest stage in sports would be an opportunity to show the world what women’s basketball has to offer and what its future holds. The fact is, Caitlin Clark is now the face of women’s basketball and she needs to use that opportunity to take the sport to even greater heights.
Hopefully Clark will don the red, white and blue in 2028 and take on the challenge of further expanding the game of women’s basketball, just as Jobs did when he returned to Apple in 1997.
