Caitlin Clark's Olympics chances hurt by lengthy evaluation process | Opinion

Leaving Caitlin Clark off the U.S. Olympic team was a basketball decision, plain and simple.

As it should be.

The selection committee was not blind to Clark’s widespread popularity, which has helped fuel explosive growth in women’s basketball. Members knew including her would have brought eyeballs and attention to the U.S. women’s quest for an eighth consecutive gold medal, not to mention making the suits at NBC and Nike, which inked Clark to a deal reportedly worth $28 million over eight years, happy.

But commercial appeal wasn’t among the criteria the committee had to consider when picking the 12 women who will play in Paris. Things like position versatility, adaptability to team concept and adaptability to international game were, and Clark simply didn’t have the body of work to merit selection.

At 22, two months removed from her last game at Iowa, she couldn’t.

“This has been a three-year process,” Jennifer Rizzotti, chair of the women’s selection committee for USA Basketball, told USA TODAY Sports after the roster was released Tuesday.

And for most of those three years, Clark was at Iowa, playing against college-level talent while the other players in the Olympic pool were going up against the best of the best in the WNBA.

More:Bypassing Caitlin Clark for Olympics was right for Team USA. And for Clark, too.

What Clark did at Iowa, becoming the all-time leading scorer in college basketball and taking the Hawkeyes to back-to-back NCAA title games her last two years, was fantastic and impressive and deserving of every accolade she got. But dropping 35 on a team of players whose careers will end with their college eligibility is not the same as, say, getting 24 against the WNBA’s second-best defensive team, as Sabrina Ionescu did in the New York Liberty’s win over the Connecticut Sun last weekend.

It didn’t help Clark’s case that her start in the WNBA has been, as it is for most rookies, rocky. She leads the league in turnovers, by a wide margin. She’s second in 3-pointers made, with 36, but is 29^th in shooting percentage from deep. On Monday night, she and most of the rest of the Indiana Fever’s starters were benched in the second half because, coach Christie Sides said, “you can’t, at this level, coach effort.”

It would have helped if Clark had been able to participate in senior team training camps, giving the committee a better sense of where she could fit on the Olympic team. But you’re as likely to see a unicorn as you are a college player at a senior-level training camp. Clark didn’t get her first invite until the one in April, which in recent years has been scheduled to coincide with the Final Four.

Clark, as you might recall, was a little busy then.

Clark did play on Team USA youth squads, helping lead the Americans to gold medals at the 2019 and 2021 U19 World Cups and winning MVP honors in 2021. But that was three years ago and the competition, and expectations, aren’t close to what the U.S. will be facing in Paris.

“We tried to give (U.S. coach Cheryl Reeve) the best team that included experience, depth, skill and gave us the confidence we were going to win the gold medal,” Rizzotti said.

A gold medal that isn’t going to be the gimme some folks think. The U.S. women have won their seven consecutive gold medals without dropping a game. But Rizzotti said that overlooks the games they won by single digits. Or only broke open late.

It also ignores that game against Belgium in February at the Olympic qualifying tournament, when the Americans needed a buzzer beater by Breanna Stewart to win.

There are no spots to “spare,” not when there are only 12 of them.

“Twelve players isn’t a lot. We wanted to make sure, without knowing how Cheryl would use everybody completely, to make sure we gave her essentially two starting lineups and a lot of great options,” Rizzotti said.

Again, committee members aren’t dumb. They know it would have been far easier to put Clark on the team and hope it didn’t matter. But part of the reason the U.S. women have been so dominant for so long is their best players have been willing to buy in over these extended evaluation periods.

Kahleah Copper barely had time to clean out her locker after the 2022 playoffs when she flew to Australia for what effectively was a tryout for the World Cup team. Kelsey Plum and Jackie Young were at the November training camp less than 10 days after the parade to celebrate the Las Vegas Aces’ second title.

If the selection committee ignored its selection criteria this one time, even for someone with Clark’s box office appeal, it would jeopardize its entire process going forward.

“It’s hard to ask players to come back if you don’t follow through on the process you explained to them from the beginning. I think the committee did that,” Rizzotti said. “It doesn’t make the calls any easier.”

The committee had an easy choice with Clark. It made the fair one, instead.

Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.