Caitlin Clark Expected to Be Left Off Olympics Roster
Indiana Fever rookie sensation Caitlin Clark is expected to be left off the 12-player Team USA women’s basketball roster for the upcoming Summer Olympics, according to sources briefed on the decision. The main roster indicates a preference for veterans with the selection of A’ja Wilson, Breanna Stewart, Diana Taurasi, Brittney Griner, Alyssa Thomas, Napheesa Collier, Jewell Loyd, Kelsey Plum, Jackie Young, Sabrina Ionescu, Chelsea Gray, and Kahleah Copper.
Seven of the 12 players have Olympic five-on-five experience and two more have 3×3 experience, so there will be only three first-time Olympians — Thomas, Copper, and Ionescu. Selected players began receiving their Team USA Olympics jerseys recently. Taurasi, who will be participating in her sixth Olympics, will be breaking an all-time international record she held with five other players, men and women.
Stewart, a two-time WNBA MVP and two-time Finals MVP, will be competing in her third Olympics. In Tokyo in 2021, she averaged 15 points and 10 rebounds per game and was named the Olympic Tournament’s Most Valuable Player. Wilson, another two-time WNBA MVP, scored 16.5 points per game in Tokyo in her Olympic debut and is off to a blazing start this WNBA season, averaging 28 points and 12.3 rebounds per game.
Clark, Brionna Jones, and Aliyah Boston would likely be alternates if one of the 12 cannot play, sources said. Boston, Clark’s Fever teammate and last year’s WNBA Rookie of the Year, is another young talent notably left off the roster. Clark is coming off a historic NCAA career at Iowa, where she became the Division I all-time leading scorer and won two National Player of the Year awards.
On Friday, she hit seven 3-pointers and matched her WNBA career-high with 30 points in a win over the Washington Mystics. In March, Clark was one of 14 players to receive an invitation to the U.S. national team’s final training camp ahead of the Summer Games. She was unable to attend as she was playing with Iowa in the Final Four, while multiple players who had put in years of service to the U.S. national program ahead of her attended.
The U.S. women has held periodic training camps for national team hopefuls for years. While not mandatory, they go a long way in helping the selection committee decide which 12 will represent the most dominant basketball program — men’s or women’s. The roster was selected by the women’s basketball committee, which includes South Carolina coach and former Team USA coach Dawn Staley, three-time Olympian and LSU assistant Seimone Augustus, two-time Olympian and Old Dominion coach Delisha Milton-Jones, Connecticut Sun president Jennifer Rizzotti, and WNBA head of league operations Bethany Donaphin.
With four members of the Las Vegas Aces, this 2024 Olympic roster is reminiscent of the 2016 Olympic roster. In 2016, one-third of the team was composed of Minnesota Lynx players — Maya Moore, Lindsay Whalen, Augustus, and Sylvia Fowles — amid the franchise’s historic run of four WNBA titles in seven seasons. On a recent episode of The Athletic Women’s Basketball Show, Augustus noted how including multiple players from a single team can benefit Team USA, which doesn’t have as much training time together for its final 12 ahead of the Olympics. The 2024 roster won’t actually take the floor together until the week before July’s All-Star game.