Indiana Fever rookie guard Caitlin Clark has reportedly been left off the 2024 U.S. Olympic women's basketball roster, three sources with knowledge of the situation confirmed to USA TODAY Saturday (June 8) morning.
The sources' confirmation comes after USA TODAY columnist Christine Brennan had previously reported that she heard Clark, 22, wasn't going to be included on the Team USA Olympic roster late Friday (June 8) night.
"I’m hearing that Caitlin Clark, the best-known women’s basketball player & most popular athlete in the country, is not going to be selected for the US Olympic women’s basketball team. Stunning news that I’m working to confirm," Brennan wrote on her X account.
Clark was selected by the Fever at No. 1 overall in the 2024 WNBA Draft in April and has averaged 16.8 points, 6.3 assists and 5.3 rebounds through her first 12 games. The former University of Iowa standout is the all-time leading scorer in NCAA basketball history and her collegiate dominance has led to a significant spike in the popularity of women's basketball.
Clark's final collegiate game, a loss to South Carolina in the March Madness Final, was the most viewed women's sporting event in history, peaking at 24 million viewers and averaging 18.7 million, which was a larger than the men's final for the first time in history. The Fever's season-opener, which marked Clark's WNBA debut, averaged 2.12 million viewers, which was the league's most-viewed game in 23 years and Indiana has been in four of the WNBA's highest-viewed games of the 2024 season, all exceeding an average of 1.5 million viewers, according to Sportsnaut.
Clark has also been at the center of heated debates over how she's been treated by other WNBA players, specifically veterans, amid her popularity, which included discussions around a hard foul from Chicago Sky guard Chennedy Carter being upgraded to a flagrant 1 launching in heated debates.
“Sometimes it stinks how much the conversation is outside of basketball and not the product on the floor and the amazing players that are on the floor and how good they are for their teams and how great this season has been for women’s basketball,” Clark told USA TODAY prior to the Fever's win against the Washington Mystics Friday night.
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