Team USA executives who made the decision not to include Caitlin Clark on the Olympic roster don’t need to be fired, or suspended, but rather they all need to answer the question: “Who do you think you are?”

 

The decision to exclude the most popular women’s basketball player ever from these Olympic games is rooted in misplaced, self-important arrogance from a collection of professionals who forgot, or refuse to accept, they’re a sales staff.

That while they do the “same job” as the men, it’s not the same. Please take all “but it’s not fair” arguments and dump them into the Seine.

The decision to keep Clark back in America rather than put her on the team in Paris is playing out to be biggest blown layup in the history of women’s basketball. The Olympics are in their second week, and Team USA’s women’s basketball team is rolling toward another gold medal in blowout games that are watched by family and friends of players.

 

Nothing short of a martian executing a triple flip from atop the Eiffel Tower will supplant Simone Biles and Noah Lyles in these Games, but Team USA denied itself a chance to be a part of the fun by leaving Clark off the team.

These Olympics could have been an Oppenheimer blast to women’s basketball, and continued the momentum its created in the last two years. Instead, these Olympics are a dead period to the sport.

As someone who worked for five years promoting women’s basketball on the collegiate level, watching these Olympics without Clark is insulting to all of the people who have, and do, bang this drum. Even if Team USA wins gold by 185 points a game, they blew it.

No one is talking about Team USA’s women’s basketball team because there is no Caitlin. The end.

 

It would be one thing if Clark was some Bill Veeck-created clown, and her spot on a roster would embarrass a team. But Clark will likely be named the WNBA’s Rookie of the Year, barely over Chicago’s Angel Reese.

If you care about this sport, or wanted to watch Clark, point your frustration at Dawn Staley, Seimone Augustus, Delisha Milton-Jones, Jennifer Rizzotti and Bethany Donaphin. They are the people who picked the players for Paris.

You might know Staley, the current head coach at South Carolina. The rest you will know only if you are a follower of women’s basketball.

Staley told NBC’s Mike Tirico before the start of these Olympics, “If we had to do it all over again, the way that she’s playing, she would be in really high consideration of making the team because she is playing head and shoulders above a lot of people.

“Shooting the ball extremely well, I mean she is an elite passer, she’s just got a great basketball IQ, and she’s a little more seasoned in the pro game than she was two months ago.”

That’s regret. It’s also a lame way to defend the dumb decision when the team was announced two months ago.

Staley, whose South Carolina team defeated Clark’s Iowa Hawkeyes in the NCAA title game this spring, has previously credited Clark as the single biggest reason why women’s basketball has enjoyed this current growth spurt.

Everyone on the selection committee failed to realize where they are; that they’re not as important as they think.

That their responsibility is to assemble a team that will continue America’s absurd run of dominance in women’s basketball, but in there is the task to sell a game that still needs selling. All of these new people watching women’s basketball are tuning for the same reason a host of people who never cared about golf watched more than 20 years ago when Tiger Woods started his pro career.

If a bunch of women’s basketball coaches and players are upset, or jealous, of the attention Clark is receiving despite not having a long resume, get over it. And get over yourselves. This isn’t about you.

Golfers were smart enough to recognize that even if Tiger Woods won the tournament, they won, too. NASCAR drivers felt the same way about Dale Jr. and Tony Stewart. In the early ‘80s, NBA players got over it when Magic Johnson and Larry Bird entered the league.

This is about a sport that is only now out of the crawling phase. The people who made this decision fooled themselves into think they’re running on their own when they’re not there yet.

Team USA will win another gold medal in women’s basketball, an accomplishment that deserves to be celebrated.

And during the celebration they may notice that the blew the layup.