Caitlin Clark’s Olympics snub: Did women’s basketball blow the layup?-ZoomTech News

The “Caitlin Clark Impact.”

For the primary time in historical past, the entire world is speaking about ladies’s basketball. Why? As a result of Caitlin Clark despatched viewership and engagement to new ranges whereas turning into essentially the most prolific scorer — male or feminine — in faculty basketball historical past. And because the No. 1 total draft choose by the Indiana Fever, she has introduced this following along with her into the WNBA. 

But, she was left off of the 2024 U.S. Girls’s Olympic basketball group. And a few individuals are not joyful.

Colin Cowherd voiced his disapproval of the choice on FS1’s “The Herd” on Monday.

“Caitlin Clark, who just isn’t one of many prime 12-15 WNBA gamers, didn’t make the Olympic group,” Cowhered mentioned. “However Christian Laettner wasn’t one of many prime 100 gamers within the NBA, and he made an Olympic group. Jaylen Brown just isn’t on this (upcoming Males’s) Olympic group, and he is one of many prime 15 gamers.

So, if evidently expertise just isn’t the one issue that ensures a spot for gamers on the Olympic group, what does? Based on Cowherd, it is all about “politics.”

“Olympic basketball groups, males’s and girls’s has at all times been subjective and really political. Isaiah Thomas did not make it. Why? Michael Jordan did not like him,” Cowherd mentioned. “To me, it looks like a possibility wasted.”

Cowherd went on to argue that not solely would Clark garner viewership for the ladies’s Olympic group, however she would additionally make her teammates cash in endorsements.

“The WNBA finals had 700,000 viewers. The draft that included Caitlin Clark had 3 times as many. I’d make the argument, like a Tiger Woods or a Connor McGregor of their prime, that she would make different individuals cash past herself.” Cowherd mentioned. “The ladies’s Olympic group doesn’t lose within the Olympics. I feel they’ve gained seven straight golds, however you would not know that. Trigger you did not watch. And [with Clark] you’d.”

Cowherd compares Clark’s success to that of Muhammad Ali and Tiger Woods, explaining that Caitlin Clark has been the inspiration behind placing ladies’s basketball on the map. 

“Life provides you few massive waves. After they do, seize your surfboard,” he mentioned. 

However in response to Cowherd, ladies’s basketball missed this wave, this chance, to proceed the upward trajectory of ladies’s basketball viewership and engagement. 

“She would triple the TV scores. The NBA would die to have a home star almost as in style as Caitlin Clark. Oh wait, they do. Anthony Edwards. They put him on the group. Anthony Edwards is not nearly as good as Jaylen Brown. But, they discovered a spot for him on the group,” Cowherd mentioned.

Placing Caitlin Clark on the group is not nearly Clark. Cowherd defined that together with her can be helpful for everybody on the group:

“Girls’s basketball feels prefer it’s affected by spite, or traditionally low vanity, or they need to show that they know greater than you do. Here is what I do know: Caitlin Clark would make all the opposite ladies on the Olympic group cash. She would make them extra well-known; she would give them extra alternative; they’d change into doubtlessly extra family names. It is a possibility wasted.”

There was a transparent, simple reply as to whether or not Clark must be on the group. Girls’s basketball answered incorrectly.

“Some stuff is enterprise 101,” Cowherd mentioned. “This can be a lay-up. And also you blew it.” 

In a while within the episode, Cowherd talked to the Philadelphia 76’s head coach Nick Nurse, who expressed his settlement with Cowherd, but provided a brand new perspective on the state of affairs.

“It is good and unhealthy,” Nurse mentioned. “I virtually cannot consider it. Trigger I agree with you that the scores, simply every thing continues to roll on if she’s on the group. However I am virtually joyful for her, too. I feel the quantity of strain she’s been underneath; taking that group from Iowa to the nationwide championships twice, that has by no means been there in any respect. At the least she would not need to have one other ramp up of unbelievable scrutiny and strain.”

Nurse wasn’t the one one stunned that Clark was left off the roster. On this previous episode of FS1’s “Converse,” Pleasure Taylor expressed how she discovered the choice to be extremely surprising. But, she defined that there are two components that go into making the choice of who will get placed on the group. 

“Who’s the most effective to symbolize america of America because the U.S. ladies’s Olympic basketball group — that may be a separate dialog from what can be the most effective for rising the game,” Taylor mentioned. “The eye that the game is getting is due to Caitlin Clark. She is bringing eyeballs; she is bringing sponsors; she is placing individuals within the seats; she is inflicting all of the dialog.”

Taylor framed the entire problem as a enterprise determination.

“From a advertising perspective, from a enterprise perspective, you may’t argue the numbers [Clark is generating],” Taylor mentioned. “What’s conflicting for me, is when can we speak in regards to the sport, and never simply the novelty, and the drama, and the eyeballs, and the scores, and the faith, and the politics, and the race. From a enterprise perspective, I agree. It wasn’t the correct determination.”

Paul Pierce agreed with Taylor, explaining on FS1’s “Undisputed,” that having Clark on the group was a enterprise determination, and girls’s basketball blew it.

“You declare you need the ladies’s recreation to develop, however you retain the preferred woman in ladies’s basketball off the group,” Pierce mentioned. “Typically you must say ‘hey guys, that is greater than the sport.’ Girls’s basketball is at an all-time excessive due to Caitlin Clark. I feel [women’s basketball] is taking a step again. It simply would not make sense to me. Girls’s basketball dropped the ball on this one.”

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