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TV viewership, jersey sales and popularity weren’t “the purview of the committee,” committee chair Jennifer Rizzotti said.
USA Basketball on Tuesday confirmed Caitlin Clark’s exclusion from its 12-player roster for the Paris Olympics. (Brian Fluharty/Getty Images)
A top USA Basketball official said Caitlin Clark’s popularity and impact on television viewership weren’t “the purview of the [selection] committee” after the organization announced its roster Tuesday for the women’s competition at this summer’s Paris Olympics.
The official announcement came three days after reports emerged that Clark would be left off the 12-player squad, igniting debate over whether the rookie WNBA star should have made the team.
“Obviously, I want today to mostly be [about] the players that made the team, but there’s no avoiding the conversation around who didn’t, so I’m happy to address it,” Jennifer Rizzotti, the USA Basketball women’s national team committee chair, told reporters during a news conference. “Obviously, we know the success that Caitlin had in college, and she’s had a tremendous start to the WNBA season so far. … But essentially it was the committee’s job to pick the 12 based on our selection criteria, and as much as you want to maybe make conversation around how we should have considered TV viewership or jersey sales or popularity, that wasn’t the purview of the committee to have those discussions. The selection criteria were very clear.”
The roster is stocked with decorated players, headlined by two-time WNBA MVP A’ja Wilson and five-time gold medalist Diana Taurasi, who will break the record for most Olympics played in basketball with her sixth selection. It also features Olympic veterans Breanna Stewart, Chelsea Gray, Napheesa Collier, Jewell Loyd and Brittney Griner, who will play internationally for the first time since she was detained in a Russian prison for 10 months in 2022.
Also included were Jackie Young and Kelsey Plum, who won gold in three-on-three basketball at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, plus first-time Olympians Sabrina Ionescu, Kahleah Copper and Alyssa Thomas, who all played on the U.S. team that won the FIBA World Cup in 2022.
