Leaving Caitlin Clark off Olympic team wasn't a snub or screw up, but it was a conundrum

ESPN's Michael Voepel talks all things Caitlin Clark on The Jenni Carlson Show.

The sports world just can't stop watching Caitlin Clark. Can't stop talking about Caitlin Clark. Can't stop debating about Caitlin Clark. 

And it's not just basketball. There have been questions of race and sexuality and politics swirling around her. The stories just don't seem to stop. 

No one knows that better or is better equipped to explain it all than ESPN's Michael Voepel. He's been covering women's basketball for decades and he's joining us to talk, of course, about Caitlin Clark on The Jenni Carlson Show.

Before we get to that, I want to encourage you to subscribe to my YouTube channel (YouTube.com/@Jenni-Carlson) and to my Substack. I hope you consider subscribing and supporting my work today.

Episode highlights

1:45: Why was Caitlin Clark left off the US Olympic team?

4:45: Looking at the players picked for the team, what did Clark lack?

8:05: Was team chemistry part of the equation — and should it have been?

11:00: Could the next Olympic team be filled with young players like Clark, Angel Reece, Juju Watkins?

14:05: Why has Caitlin Clark’s start in the WNBA been so rough?

16:20: Is all press for women’s basketball good press for women’s basketball?

20:25: How should the WNBA and USA Basketball be graded for how they’ve handled all this Caitlin Clark stuff?

Producer: Jacquelyn Musgrove

Creative Director: Michael Lane

Jenni: Michael Voepel, I am so glad you're here. We have known each other for years, but it's been way too long since we've had a chance to sit and chat about basketball.

Michael: Yeah, I was thinking when we first met. I believe you were a senior at the University of Kansas as our Kansas City Star, Kansas correspondent. So it's been a minute that we've known each other.

Jenni: Correct! Yes, I was there when Marion Washington was there, and she loved you even though you're a Missouri grad.

Michael: This is true, she was able to overlook that fatal flaw.

Jenni: She loves you regardless. But women's basketball, we know you have been covering it for decades. And I know you've seen all sorts of big moments in this sport, but obviously this whole Caitlin Clark thing is just next level for the entire sport. And right now everybody is talking about USA Basketball team for the Olympics, Caitlin being left off.

You've heard from a variety of people including Jen Rizzotti, who picked the team. What's your sense of what this came down to for Caitlin Clark and not making this Olympic team?

Michael: You know, Jenni, they went with experience and people who had a lot of time on the national team. That answer doesn't go over well with people who just wanted to see Caitlin Clark on the team. She is the most popular women's basketball player right now in terms of the general population. People are just very intrigued to watch her. She's a fun player to watch. She's coming off, obviously, a great college career where I mean, let's be honest, she scored more points than anybody in Division-I history, and she just kept rising to the occasion, right? Was able to get two Final Four appearances, was the No. 1 draft pick. So there's a lot of reasons people want to see her that are very legitimate reasons. 

The issue we have, and Jenni, you know this as well as anybody for as long as you've been following women's sports, there's probably no deeper team in the world than the USA national women's basketball team, and it's been that way a long time. So what they ended up going with was the idea of experience and particularly experience on the senior national team. … The US does not have a single player under 25 on this team. I talked to Jen Rizzotti this morning. She said, ‘We didn't talk about age.’ But that is something I think people are going to be thinking about, that this team decided to go older. 

Now, it's not old. You've got a couple of 26-year-olds, but still, first time ever, you don't have one of those young players who's getting their feet wet, so to speak. And we've had that before on almost every Olympic team. 

Here's the thing that people never want to hear. And you know this as a columnist. Boy, do you know this. People never want to hear nuance. And they almost never want to hear that there was no easy answer. But that's the case here. Some people are going to say, ‘It was really easy. Slam dunk. Caitlin Clark.’ If you do that, you're going to be leaving out somebody who has earned a spot, and you're going to be taking something away. Instead, what they didn't add was a Caitlin Clark factor. I'm not saying that's insignificant because I think it is, but it wasn't like, ‘Boy, did they really screw this up,’ so much as, ‘Boy, did they face a conundrum.’ They made a choice. And now we'll see how that goes forward.

Jenni: You bring up a great point because for all the people that are saying, ‘Well, Caitlin Clark deserves a spot.’ Well, somebody else has to be removed from the 12 if she's on there. There doesn't seem to be an obvious removal. I mean, they're all fantastic. I mean, you could pick the next 12 best players in the pool and probably have the best team going to the Olympics.

But the 12 that they did pick, is there an area where you feel like maybe Caitlin Clark, the experience factor being one thing, but was there anything that you feel like looking at who they did pick that maybe parts of her game, areas that maybe in another four years as she continues to evolve and get better, maybe those are the areas that we'll see her fill in? What do you think about just the guard skill that they have on that Olympic roster and where maybe she was a little bit lacking?

Michael: I think that's a great point, is that the guards were particularly strong this year. Really strong. You have everybody who's a guard who made this team has played a pretty significant time on the national team. Now, Sabrina Ionescu … she wasn't in the Olympics back in 2021, but she's been with the national team since then and she's having a really good season. And she's an excellent guard. She's one of the young ones at 26. She and Jackie Young are the youngest on this team. Jackie Young and Kelsey Plum both won Olympic gold on the 3-on-3 team. 

Now, we'll just get to the elephant in the room, which a lot of people are talking about. Diana Taurasi, who turns 42 (Tuesday), June 11th. Did she need to be on her sixth Olympic team? And a lot of people are gonna say that's where this selection went wrong, to say she's had five Olympics. They won a world championship two years ago without Sue Bird or Diana Taurasi. Was it time to move on?

One of the issues with that, and I can see that argument. I really can. One of the issues is how much time Diana Taurasi has spent with the national team for the last 20 years. How much does that leadership mean to this team? Were they ready to move on without it? She's been at so many camps, and that's not an insignificant thing because you are taking a risk at camp. Anytime you're a professional athlete and you go somewhere to compete, there's a potential you could get injured if you go to USA Basketball camp. It has happened to people. You get injured, that could take money out of your pocket for playing internationally or playing in the WNBA. So those are risks that we've had the senior women's national team be willing to take over decades now. So that's why it's hard, I think, for USA Basketball to tell a Diana Taurasi, ‘Hey, we're done. You've had five. We’re done. We’re ready to move on.’ That's hard, too.

And again … when these arguments take place on Twitter, it's just, ‘They don't need her. She's not that good anymore.’ And all this stuff. And you're ignoring a lot of the factors about the culture of the team, about the time she spent with the team, what she means to other players, what she means to Cheryl Reeve, the coach. There wasn't an easy choice to take anybody off this team for Caitlin Clark.

Jenni: I think about Diana Taurasi, obviously, you know, great player, has been a world-class player. But what a leader. I mean, I know a lot of people have boiled down the Caitlin Clark argument to, is this a basketball decision or is this a chemistry question? Is there jealousy? Is this an issue of race or politics? There's all sorts of issues that, as you alluded to, on the Twittersphere, it goes all over the place.

But chemistry and leadership is no small thing. And I'm not saying that it's not there if Caitlin Clark is included, but Diana Taurasi's leadership is no small thing. People might want to trivialize chemistry or any of that, but how much of that is important in this whole thing?

Michael: Maybe the biggest reason it's important is the US team always has the least amount of time to prepare, compared to usually other countries. Because really all of our athletes now, all of the United States athletes that are gonna be on the women's Olympic team are gonna be WNBA players. So they're gonna be playing in the WNBA. They're limited in terms of their time to have camps, right? 

They have a series of camps, and through no fault of her own, Caitlin Clark can't take part in any of those camps. She's in the middle of her season with Iowa and then the very last camp was during the Final Four and she was playing in the Final Four. So it really wasn't her fault. I don't know if there's anything she could have done different in this because she didn't have the opportunity to play with these folks. 

You look back on other selections that happened to be rookies in an Olympic year. Taurasi is one of them in 2004. Candace Parker in 2008. They didn't take Nneka Ogwumike. By the way, very sore spot for me that Nneka Ogwumike has never made an Olympic team. I think that's the greatest stain on USA Basketball ever. And I do not pull punches on that one. They messed up with that. They've never had Nneka, and she's never going to play on an Olympic team. And that's a real shame.

But 2016, they take Breanna Stewart. In all those cases, those players did have a chance to play with the senior national team. So they were rookies, but they had a little bit more experience. Again, you could go so granular on this, Jenni, talking about what years people… happen to be WNBA rookies versus if you're a WNBA rookie and you're three years away from the Olympics. So, that's part of the dialogue is just (Clark) happened, in an Olympic year, to be a rookie and this popular of a rookie.

Jenni: You talked about the fact that this team will not include a 25 or younger player. It's not just Caitlin Clark right now. It’s Angel Reese. It's a long list of really good rookies in the WNBA. But also players coming up through the college ranks. Juju Watkins is the top of my mind as I think about that next group.

Is this maybe an inflection point for USA Basketball? This roster that's got some of those really long-term veterans, but next Olympics, ’28, it's LA. Is that a new age of USA Women's Basketball as we think about a roster that likely will include Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese? I

Michael: I think so. And it's funny because over the years we've kind of thought, ‘Hey, is this the new-look team?’ And yet it's never quite the new-look team because unlike the men's game — and there's really good reasons for this — you don't necessarily have players who play three and four and five Olympics. Now again, we have somebody with six Olympics. Lisa Leslie was in four Olympics. Teresa Edwards was in five. So one thing that's interesting to me when you think about the culture is, you literally have players who have a connection to players that are like 20 years older than them because they played with somebody who played with somebody who played with somebody. And that is a big part of USA Basketball culture. 

But to your point, we have a really great sophomore class, the incoming sophomore class with the Juju Watkins and Hannah Hidalgo and so many other players. I mean, I can't even name them all because we had such a good freshmen class this past year, and they're all going to be looking for USA Basketball spots. So that's a good thing. And they're all going to be coming into a WNBA that, by the time they come in, it's going to have two more teams. And one of them is an international team with Toronto. I think those are all good things. 

The unfortunate thing, and I try to be realistic about it because sports dialogue now, sports dialogue unfortunately has turned into a lot of people screaming at each other all the time and not listening and saying, ‘You know, hey, let's talk about this.’ Here's the best scenario for Caitlin Clark if she's not on this Olympic team is that she will be in the All-Star Game, and they face the Olympic team. That could be a darn good team with Arike Ogunbowale, Nneka Ogwumike, as I mentioned before. The last time that happened in 2021, they beat the Olympic team. They're pretty motivated to say, ‘Hey, OK, we're staying home. We're going to beat you.’ So, that's an opportunity for her to play against the Olympians. 

And then you know what? She needs some time off. She has been going, going, going, going. It's not gonna be the worst thing in the world if she has a few weeks to not be at the center of this hurricane that she's been in. Those are all positives.

Jenni: And let's not forget the WNBA didn't do the Fever a ton of favors with their early season schedule. Lots of games against some of the best in the league. I mean, Clark has been, I hate to use the word pummeled after that foul a week or so ago, but it's been a hard start for Caitlin Clark and the Fever.

Michael: It has, and one thing I would say is, and you know this because you've covered so many different sports, there is a rookie initiation that goes on, and the fact that Caitlin and Angel, that generation of players is the first to benefit from NIL, they're coming into the league as millionaires. That never happened before. And some of the players are saying the right things like, ‘Whatever, we're happy to have them.’

Athletes … they're the most competitive human beings on the face of the planet. And somebody they know has a shoe deal, and they didn't get one. They're going to want to knock that player on their butt. That's just athletes. So I think Caitlin and Angel have both had really hard fouls against them. I don't necessarily like that this happens, but it is part of sports. They're both going to learn from it because they're hyper competitive people. 

This is going to be a really hard season. You knew this was going to be a hard season for Caitlin. The Fever hasn't been good in a long time. She's got a lot on her shoulders. She's got so much attention. And people are using her for arguments that she has nothing to do with. This turned into a culture war thing. She's just like a symbol that has nothing to do with it. And that's hard. 

She's 22. You know, I think she's handled it fantastic. And I think when this whole season's over, if I were her, I would go to the prettiest island in the quietest place in the entire planet and just not do anything for a while. That'll be good for her as well.

Jenni: That's exactly right because you've alluded to it a couple of times: this media landscape. This is what we've seen in the last year or so with Caitlin Clark is growth and attention for women's basketball, something like it has never seen before. And yet there's with the more media, some of it has been just super loud. Some of it has even been vulgar, Michael, about this whole Caitlin Clark situation. Whether it's the hard foul or this national team thing. What do you make of it? I mean, there's that belief that, all press is good press, but what's the sense of just how this is impacting women's basketball?

Michael: I wish it didn't have to be this way because I think it's hard. I can't imagine from a mental health standpoint, what this is like for 22-year0olds to deal with. And you can say, ‘Well, guess what? You know, she's got a $28 million shoe deal. It's time to deal with it.’ All the money in the world doesn't make your everyday life (easy) when you're being discussed constantly on social media. When Caitlin says she doesn't follow it, I really believe. She was like that in college, and Iowa as a team was like that. They all really tried to tune out of it. 

There's no way you cannot know what's going on, though. And that's what I worry about is, for her or for Angel or for any of these kids, they are still kids. And you're a mom and you've covered sports a long time and you know, sometimes there's no way to protect athletes. There just isn’t. Even in college, you have to just sort of face the music and you hope you have good people around you and you hope you have that sense that you'll get through it. 

I had an interesting conversation with Kelsey Plum, Jenni, about this because Kelsey was a No. 1 pick. She had the scoring record, NCAA scoring record, before Caitlin. Came into the league, kind of got her butt kicked more than once. I mean, she did. She wasn't under the same scrutiny because the magnification of the women's game has changed. But one of the things Kelsey said to me was, and I think she's tried to reach out to Caitlin a little bit and say this is, ‘Just get through this year. Your rookie year is always going to be the hardest, and you're going to look back on it and say, ‘Wow, that was a lot. But you get through it.’

The dialogue is hard, but again, you know that. You've been in many firestorms of dialogue about so many sports. Should Oklahoma have the College of Web Series? Now that's suddenly turned into like a giant Twitter controversy. Not Oklahoma, but Oklahoma City, right? Everything can be turned into this giant controversy. And I think the difference is — and I think people are smart enough to know this — the people who yell the loudest aren't always right. In fact, a lot of times, they aren't. But you have to sort of listen to a lot of different viewpoints and sometimes realize there's no easy answer to the national team. There's no easy answer to how do you make it easier for rookies. In some ways you don't. It's kind of what they have to go through. And then you hope that these kids, again, have a good support system and realize that they can't control what's said on Twitter or X or Instagram or on ESPN First Take or whatever. They can't control it. So try not to let it bother them. Boy, that's a lot easier said than done.

Jenni: As you think about USA Basketball, their Olympic team decision, as you think about the WNBA and obviously they've found themselves in situations and how to handle things with Caitlin and some other rookies as well. What sort of grade would you give those two entities as you think about the Olympic team that was selected and these early weeks of the WNBA season? I don't know about you, but I still look at that Olympic team and think, ‘I don't know who's beating these 12.’ To me, that seems like a really good team. But again, just their handling, both of those entities, of the situation. Can't be perfect, but how do you think they've both handled it?

Michael: One of the issues I think that if you go back to the root of USA Basketball or any national governing body in the United States is their earliest origin is with amateur sports. And even though we've been in a period now for over 30 years where the Olympics opened it up to professional athletes, that amateur route to me sometimes still really shows up. 

You talk to Jen Rizzotti today, she says, ‘OK, our selection committee was tasked with the best possible team for this coaching staff at this time in this tournament.’ They would say, ’It’s not that we don't respect the power of marketing, but that's not what we're tasked with doing.’ USA basketball, at least from the women's standpoint to me, has been much more about, ‘Hey, we'll win the medals. That's what we're here to do.’ And again, that's where I think there's a little bit of … you don't want to change their culture because so much about their culture is good. … And to the degree that I try to explain anything on Twitter sometimes, I try to get this point across that, you can say that, but it is a WNBA product. 

All the players are WNBA players. In this case, all the coaches except Kara Lawson is a WNBA coach or GM, and she was a WNBA player. She spent time in the pros with the NBA. So it's almost inseparable. USA Basketball and the WNBA. WNBA like any pro sports league exists for eyeballs. That's why it exists. They don't play just because you have to play, right? You play because it's an entertainment option and people are going to play. I always joke about that, Jenni. People have to pick up garbage. People have to fix utilities. People don't have to play basketball or any of this, but people want them to.

Jenni: I really want them to continue that.

Michael: Yeah, exactly. But you have to look at, it's a business. So does USA Basketball not think like a business? Well, the WNBA is. 

I guess that kind of goes to your question of how they handled it. I don't know. I'm not sure how they could have done differently unless USA Basketball changes a little bit of how it picks a team and you have a “general manager,’ which I think the men went with that, that model. And if that were the case, maybe they would have looked at this a little differently.

Because there was another option, which is 3-on-3. That's four more spots. Three-on-three is a little different, though, in terms of a lot of your spots, I think multiple of your spots, have to go to people who have the point system, right? So you have to have some people that just earn points, but you have wiggle room in as long as somebody has played in a tournament in the last, I believe it's the last calendar year … so what happens sometimes in some places is they say, ‘Let's just get you to one tournament, so you have a ranking and then you're eligible.’

Would that have been a way … now again, would that have taken a spot away from one of the four 3-on-3 people who really deserved it? Yes. But would that, if USA basketball had been thinking of this … largely from a marketing standpoint and said, ‘How many shirts are we going to sell with Caitlin Clark's name on the back? How much money can we make out of her being an Olympian? Let's figure out a way to do it that doesn't completely screw up our culture.’ Maybe they could have done that, but they didn't. And again, you can look at that and say, ‘Should they have, should they not have?’ It didn't.

Jenni: Yeah. Well, I'm sure that there'll be another Caitlin Clark-related firestorm coming. So we know you'll be there to cover it for ESPN.com and ESPN. Where can people find your stuff? What do you got coming up that people can look forward to?

Michael: Well, interestingly, we will have that the other interesting thing coming up this week is it's the rematch between the ‘super teams’ from last year. First time that New York Liberty and Las Vegas Aces will play each other is this year or this coming weekend, Saturday. I'll be in Las Vegas for that. And that game will be interesting, Jenni, because the Aces, despite all their Olympians and everything else, they're 5-4 right now. So they've had a little bit of a struggle so far, the two time WNBA champs. We’ll stuff on that matchup. 

The other interesting thing to watch for, my colleague Alexa Philippou will be writing about this is, who's going to be on that WNBA All-Star team that faces the Olympic team? That game's coming up in July, and all of a sudden, I think that can be a really good thing for the WNBA. A lot of people are going to say, ‘Hey, we want to see how the Olympic team does against the people that aren't on the Olympic team.’ So I think people will be able to see that stuff this week on ESPN.com.

Jenni: Hey, that WNBA All-Star game? Way more exciting than the NBA All-Star game. That's for sure.

Michael: Yeah, I would say that's probably true. I would say it's true.

Jenni: If there's one NBA game I know I can skip every year, it's that one. Sorry, All-Stars.