Should Caitlin Clark have made U.S. Olympic basketball team?

Andraya Carter breaks down the U.S. national team roster and offers a take on why Caitlin Clark was left off the list.

Including a WNBA rookie on the Olympic squad is far from unprecedented: The United States did it with Taurasi in 2004, Candace Parker in 2008 and Stewart in 2016. And in the year before the WNBA launched, Rebecca Lobo was included on the 1996 Olympic team after graduating from UConn in 1995. Taurasi and Sue Bird were the pillars of Team USA's backcourt from their time leaving UConn as teammates in the early 2000s to Bird's retirement after the 2022 season. Neither played on the 2022 FIBA Women's World Cup team, which won gold. But Taurasi has played well enough so far in her 20th WNBA season -- and is so valued for her leadership -- that she's back for what might finally be her last Olympics., second in the WNBA in scoring -- didn't make the Olympic team, either.

Plum, Young and Loyd -- all former Olympians from the 3x3 or 5-on-5 squads -- were essentially locks. Prior to Clark taking the sport by storm, Ionescu felt like the next guard in line to make the jump to the senior Olympic team: She was part of the 2022 World Cup gold-medal winning squad, had been a regular at USA Basketball training camps and has come into her own over the last season-plus in the WNBA.

Because every U.S. player is active in the WNBA, their preparation won't include the kind of extended training camp with roster cuts most national teams are able to hold. That had to happen with camps during the WNBA offseason, most recently during the NCAA Final Four, which Clark was unable to attend because she was busy leading Iowa to the title game.

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