LEAVING CAITLIN CLARK OFF THE OLYMPIC TEAM IS A PAINFUL AMERICAN BLUNDER
The Games need many more viewers — and so does NBC — yet decision-makers didn’t think about Clark’s immense popularity in naming a 12-member team with veterans who will win another blase gold medal
The Olympic Games, last I looked, needs an athlete who drew 24 million viewers to her national championship game. In Tokyo, an average of only 15.6 million watched in 2021. In China, an average of 10.7 million watched in 2022. It’s shocking to see leaders at a media colossus — Michael Cavanagh is the Comcast president, Mark Lazarus is the chairman, Cesar Conde is the news chairman, Rick Cordella is the sports boss, Rebecca Chatman is the coordinating producer, Mike Tirico is the puppet — wielding zero power thrusts to lift those killshot numbers.
None of them put Caitlin Clark in Paris.
Until someone explains, NBCUniversal will have a new gap in its name, with the flaw adding a massive space. How many ratings did they just lose at NBC (space) Universal?
If there is any hope for the Games in a shadowy global future, the racial politics that govern women’s basketball should have been destroyed. Any TV operation attempting to reignite the past — 27 million watched Rio de Janeiro eight years ago — would front a mission to remind Jennifer Rizzotti and her U.S. Women’s National Team Committee that NBC is paying $7.75 billion for broadcasts through 2032. Did anyone in a Prada or Gucci outfit even get involved in central discussions? Did anyone read off large audiences, the endorsement millions, the idea that Clark has made bigger waves for female sportsdom than any athlete of her time — if not all time? Apparently not.
Mind blowingly, America decided not to place Clark on a 12-player team that begins play next month. Never mind how the nation continues to embrace her in a maddening first WNBA season. Never mind how she takes dirty shoulder-checks from players who want to make her hurt. Friday night, Clark hit seven three-pointers and scored 30 in a victory for the Indiana Fever in Washington, where 20,333 attended as the league’s largest crowd in 17 years. Though the NBA is engaged in a Finals that includes the impressive Celtics and Luka Doncic — and though the NHL has started a Stanley Cup and baseball offers the Dodgers and Yankees in the Bronx — one story carries an unprecedented prevalence. It is Caitlin Clark, still shooting her logo bombs, managing her way in a professional life when players are targeting her.
Folks in this country want to see her face the world. They enjoy Simone Biles and Katie Ledecky, but they don’t have the appeal of Clark. Once again, we’ll see Diana Taurasi, who turns 42 this week. Wasn’t she the one who warned Clark about the WNBA with “reality is coming” shots? One more time for Diana, closer to 50 than 30? Brittney Griner also is on the roster, though she placed cannabis oil cartridges in her luggage and spent 10 months in a Russian jail. Couldn’t someone at the network make some sort of cogent case for Clark?
“I don’t know how you leave the country without her,” said Lisa Leslie, the four-time Olympic gold medalist.
What happened? The sport’s clout-carriers let the veterans win. The U.S. has snagged every tournament since 1996 and will win again without Clark. But leaving her at home sends a winning statement to A’ja Wilson, the WNBA’s two-time MVP, who delivered more harsh words: “A lot of people may say it’s not about Black and white, but to me, it is. … That’s why it boils my blood when people say it’s not about race because it is.” Since then, Clark has been blasted and slammed by players offended she’s making more than $30 million in endorsements when veterans make an average of $113,295. Stars who’ve taken salvos at Clark, such as Breanna Stewart, are happy to be helping America when she is not.
Tirico sat there, as usual, but Bob Costas would have raised holy hell. The decision was made by Rizzotti — a lifer and president of the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun — along with former Team USA coach and player Dawn Staley, the South Carolina coach who beat Clark in the college title game in April. Joining them were Dan Padover, general manager of the Atlanta Dream; three-time Olympian Seimone Augustus; two-time Olympian DeLisha Milton-Jones; and Bethany Donaphin, the WNBA’s head of league operations. None of them have an interest in NBC’s ratings or your summer desires. As the braintrust of a monumental Olympic effort, they should care greatly about Clark pushing engagement numbers for a growing game in Europe. The coach, Cheryl Reeve, provided input but didn’t make the final call.
All are WNBA types. None are Caitlin Clark types.
To her credit, she doesn’t expect an apology from Chennedy Carter, who flagrantly fouled her last week. “No. Basketball's competitive. I get it,” Clark said. “Sometimes your emotions get the best of you — it happened to me multiple times throughout the course of my career. People are competitive. (Carter is) having a tremendous season. She's played great basketball — in my eyes, probably in first place for Sixth Player of the Year. She's been great off the bench for them.”
Nor is she happy about yet another controversy. “That's just not where my focus is. That's not what I think about on a day-to-day basis,” Clark said. “I think about my team. I think about ways I can get better. It's just basketball at the end of the day. There's no grudges, there's nothing like that. It's a sport, it's competitive. It's not going to be nice all the time; that's not what basketball is. And I think that people that play that at the highest level understand that.”
Also praising her was NBA commissioner Adam Silver, whose league owns the WNBA and only benefits from Clark’s popularity. Should he have involved himself in talks — considering his current movement from one network to another, including NBC (space) Universal, in forming his own media rights? “As a fan, it’s nothing new in basketball that there’s sort of ‘welcome to the league’ moments, especially for heralded rookies,” he said. “Of course, I want to see Caitlin treated fairly and appropriately in the league. I would say it seems like she can take care of herself. She’s a tough player. I think ultimately this is very healthy for women’s basketball in the WNBA. It’s generating tremendous additional interest.”
Interest is the concept at work. At some point soon, Rizzotti will have to comment. She declined when contacted Saturday. There’s a slight chance Chelsea Gray, a point guard, might be replaced if she doesn’t recover from a foot injury.
Caitlin Clark? Isn’t she averaging 16.8 points and 6.3 assists? Nah, she also has 5.6 turnovers a game, which doesn’t matter to Americans who’d still watch every minute of women’s hoops and otherwise won’t watch at all.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.