Should Caitlin Clark have made the Olympic team?
On basketball merit, the answer is probably "no."
Christine Brennan of USA Today wrote a scathing attack on USA Basketball for leaving the sensational Caitlin Clark off of the women’s Olympic Team. Is the attack justified?
There are two questions here. First, should the team have been selected based solely on basketball merit or should USA Basketball have been mindful of additional factors that favor picking Clark? Second, does Clark deserve to be on the team if merit alone is considered?
Those of you who have read my stuff over the years won’t be surprised to find that I favor selection based on basketball merit alone. I understand that sports increasingly is about other considerations, but I view this development with dismay.
Reasonable people can certainly disagree with me, but I cannot justify shattering the Olympic dream of even one deserving player in the name of selling merchandise, attracting “eyeballs,” or “growing the sport.” Sports should always be about sports, not “the greater good.”
USA Basketball says it followed a mandate to consider only merit in selecting the Olympic team. I applaud this, and wish other institutions would follow that example.
Brennan argues that selecting Clark would have been justified on merit alone:
There seems to be a notion out there that Clark didn’t deserve to be put on the team on merit. That’s ridiculous. First of all, the decision is subjective, so you can make a case for just about anyone and everyone [NOTE: How, then, is it ridiculous to say Clark didn’t merit selection?]
But how about some statistics? Clark is 13th in the WNBA in points per game [now 16th]. Taurasi is 15th [now 14th]. Clark is fourth in assists per game. Sabrina Ionescu, 8th; Kelsey Plum, 11th; and Jewell Loyd, 14th, all are on the list for the Olympic team. Clark is second in 3-pointers made, two ahead of Taurasi.
In her first 10 games, Clark scored more than 150 points and had more than 50 rebounds and 50 assists, a feat previously accomplished only by Ionescu in WNBA history. She also became the first rookie and only the fourth player ever in the league to record 30 points, five rebounds, five assists, three steals and three blocks in a game, joining Taurasi, Stewart and Angel McCoughtry.
I don’t follow the WNBA closely enough to say for sure that Clark doesn’t deserve a place on the Olympic team. However, I know basketball well enough to say that the case Brennan presents, based on cherry-picked stats, is quite unpersuasive.
Yes, Clark has compiled some impressive numbers. But some of her key numbers are impressively bad.
Clark’s field-goal percentage is below 37 percent. She’s below 33 percent on three-pointers. And her 5.5 turnovers per game (compared to 6 assists) leads the league. The guards Brennan compared Clark to in the paragraph quoted above all have much better assist-to-turnover ratios.
Missed shots and turnovers are a formula for losing basketball.
I understand that Clark is drawing an enormous amount of defensive attention, some of it very rough. But, although I haven’t watched any WNBA games this year, common sense tells me that other high scorers, including the ones who made the Olympic team, must also overcome defenses designed to stop them. Defenses naturally key on the biggest scoring threats.
Brennan continues:
Just hours before she found out she wasn’t going to be on the Olympic team, Clark made a WNBA rookie record-tying seven 3’s and scored 30 points in front of the largest WNBA crowd in 17 years
This game provides a glimpse into Clark’s very bright future. But let’s not forget that it was against the then-winless Washington Mystics, a bad joke of a team. In her most recent outing, Clark scored only 7 points on 3-11 shooting, with seven turnovers.
The other dimension to the question of basketball merit is defense. Based on what I saw of Clark in college, her defense is so-so. I don’t know how it compares to the defense of the guards selected ahead of her, but I assume that USA Basketball took defense into consideration and that Clark’s defense did not argue in her favor.
I’m not trying to be hyper-critical of Clark. In fact, I’m a fan of her game. She’s extremely talented and will very likely become a genuine WNBA star before long.
Clark is also classy. She didn’t moan about not making the Olympic team and has held her tongue about the cheap shots she’s had to take from players jealous of her game and the hoopla that surrounds it. (It’s also possible that her race and heterosexuality give rise to resentment, but I don’t know that to be the case.)
But the argument that Clark’s performance warrants inclusion on Team USA seems weak. And I agree with USA Basketball that selection should be based solely on performance.