Watch Colin Cowherd of Fox Sports Radio’s The Herd once again rip the WNBA and women’s basketball for ‘gatekeeping’ Caitlin Clark’s career through ‘dumb’ marketing blunders, saying he still can’t get over why she was left off the U.S. Olympic team.
Check out the segment above as Colin says the WNBA needs to stop being so 'petty', 'insular', and 'dumb', and to get rid of this 'PROVE YOU BELONG!' nonsense that is preventing Clark from shining as bright as she could.
Colin Cowherd: “From the very beginning, women’s basketball – from the Olympics to the WNBA – has been sort of sending a message to casuals like me and you... ‘CAITLIN CLARK IS NOT QUITE READY! LET’S NOT GET AHEAD OF OURSELVES!’... The more I watch Caitlin Clark, the more I think WOMEN'S BASKETBALL is not ready. Caitlin Clark is more than ready.
She helped her WNBA All-Star team beat the U.S. Olympic Team this weekend. She had 10 assists and was the best playmaker. One of her teammates scored 34 and she just kept feeding her the ball. She had the most assists in the win and has had double-digit assists in seven of her last eight games. The WNBA butchered her early schedule and snubbed her from the Olympics. Now the Indiana Fever are a potential playoff team. She stretches the floor, she’s great with spacing, and she’s a perfect Olympics or All-Star player, especially Olympics. All-Star Games are a little showing off, but the Olympics – if you’re not the first, second, or third-best player on the team; and she wouldn’t be yet – you need to be a facilitator, not a ball hog. I would argue that she passes too much.
The women’s Olympic team said ‘IF WE PUT HER ON THE TEAM, THERE’S NO QUESTION SHE’S GOING TO BE A DISTRACTION!’... Well, you know what’s a ‘distraction’? Her NOT on the team. That’s what everyone’s talking about.
I’ve learned with women’s basketball as a whole, they’re very much like men’s soccer in America. They’re a little petty, they’ve been ignored to a larger degree than other sports, they’ve got a chip on their shoulder, and they’re sort of a ‘PROVE YOU BELONG!'... With men’s soccer, it’s like you have to have a passcode to even talk about the sport online, and for women’s basketball it’s this constant ‘PROVE YOU BELONG!’... Caitlin Clark BELONGS on the Olympic team, she BELONGS on the All-Star team, she BELONGS in the Skills Competition...
And here’s the other thing, women’s basketball. You can’t use the excuse that she ‘caught you off-guard.’ A lot of times, overnight sensations do catch businesses off-guard, but two years before she entered the WNBA, Caitlin Clark, for little Iowa, was setting college basketball records. You knew two years in advance ‘oh, we got a star’, and one year in advance ‘she’ll be the number one pick.’ There was no excuse butchering her early schedule [making it too difficult]. There’s no excuse not having months and months of discussions on the Olympic team. She’s clearly one of the better long-range performers in the league, and I’d argue she’s the first or second-best playmaker. She leads the WNBA in assists, and this is for a team that doesn’t have a lot of finishers.
She always says the right thing at the right time at the podium, and she’s gonna downplay this win by her All-Star team over the ‘coveted’ Olympic team that ‘SHE’S NOT GOOD ENOUGH TO BE ON!’... So far, she’s more than prepared and capable, it’s women’s basketball that’s not quite ready for Caitlin Clark.”
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