Casey Wasserman, the president of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee, disagrees with Team USA’s choice to leave Caitlin Clark off of its 2024 summer team bound for Paris, according to an interview with USA Today.
With a chance to grow the game globally, Clark staying home misses the mark, Wasserman says, but he does understand the roster makeup side of the conversation.
“I think it’s a missed opportunity because she’s clearly a generational talent at a time when the world was ready for it,” Wasserman said. “There have been incredible talents in the world, shame on all of us, the world wasn’t in a place to embrace that. Take Diana (Taurasi) or Breanna Stewart, or some of our (Wasserman) clients who are going to be on the team. They are dominant at a level that’s never been seen before but the world wasn’t ready to fill a building like Caitlin Clark did for whatever, the Final Four.
“Now you have both those things and so that’s a powerful opportunity and I just think it would have been an opportunity to elevate the women’s team but I understand the other side of it, which is it’s an independent process and it’s hard to get in the way of telling (the coach and the committee) what to do.”
Former WNBA star Lisa Leslie, owner of several gold medals, said earlier this spring that Team USA “should not leave the country without her” during Clark’s Final Four run with Iowa.
During the same time, USA Basketball was holding its Olympics training camp and Clark was unable to participate given her duties with the Hawkeyes.
“Unfortunately, I think something USA Basketball needs to look at is the qualification process for the players if you have athletes going deep into the NCAA tournament, it makes it really difficult to participate in the process, so you don’t even necessarily get the opportunity that others do,” Wasserman said. “Whether she should have been on or not, she didn’t really have the chance to be on the court at the time in those moments to be judged in the same way. And that’s a hard thing for an athlete.”
The WNBA’s most polarizing player as a rookie and league-wide sensation, Clark reacted to the news she had been left off Team USA’s roster earlier this month.
“No disappointment,” Clark said. “I think it just gives you something to work for. That’s a dream. Hopefully one day I can be there. I think it’s just a little more motivation. You remember that.”
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