Just to provide some context for what follows, Caitlyn Clark is a professional women’s basketball player. If you have heard of Caitlyn Clark, there is a pretty significant chance that she is the only womens basketball player you have ever heard of, since almost no one follows the WNBA, or they didn’t until Caitlyn Clark arrived. Now, the WNBA is enjoying record attendance and record TV ratings and most of this is directed at the team that Clark plays on, which currently has a record of 3-20.

I don’t have the time or energy to go into details about how we and Caitlyn Clark got here, but here’s a very brief summary. Clark played for Iowa, where she dragged the Hawkeyes to back-to-back national championship games in her junior and senior seasons. Outside of Clark, Iowa didn’t have a lot of talent, although that’s a little unfair to the rest of the team. Next year without Clark, I fully expect the Hawkeyes to finish in the top five in their conference and get to the postseason again. That’s a far cry from the national championship game, but it ain’t sloppy seconds either.

As a basketball player, Clark has a lot of above average skills, but she has one skill in which she is truly amazing. She can shoot. From anywhere. If someone told me they saw Clark draining length of the court jump shots better than the average person could walk down the hall, I’d say that there’s no way that’s true. Then I’d think for a moment and say, “Really?” If it’s Caitlyn Clark, I could almost believe it. Once she crosses half court, she is well within her shooting range. This creates some awful matchup problems for opposing teams since she’s also a very good passer. She is as good a shooter that I have ever seen. There’s an old saying in football that offense fills seats, but defense wins championships. That’s not really true, but it’s certainly true that people loves scoring and Clark fills the score sheet as well as anyone ever.

Clark was drafted into the WNBA by the Indiana Fever, perhaps the worst professional sports team in any league in the country. Since her arrival, they are no longer the worst team in the league, but not by much. For her own part Clark is near the top of the league in points, 3-point shooting, and assists. Her assist numbers would actually be better if more of her teammates could hit a layup, but that’s life. Also since her arrival, she’s been treated by opposing players like the new inmate in a 1970s women’s prison movie. Pretty much every game she’s getting whalloped, sometimes as a part of overly aggressive play that’s not that unusual, but occasionally she gets blasted in ways that make you think opponents are trying to hurt her. I’ve seen a thousand explanations about the aggressive behavior she’s had to endure and I suppose it’s a little like Kipling’s blind men trying to figure out what an elephant looks like. All of the explanations have a little validity and none of them are fully valid. One explanation, is that she’s white and straight and her popularity angers the rest of the players, who are predominantly black and lesbian. I’m having a little trouble wrapping my head around that. The league is mostly comprised of African American players, but a lot of the star players are white and many of the star players are straight. Perhaps the best player in the league right now is Sabrina Ianescu who is both straight and white. A quick internet search didn’t find any articles about Ianescu getting mauled anytime she drove the lane in her rookie season. Jealousy is another reason frequently cited for the poor behavior. In addition to the attention she’s receiving, Clark is making a LOT of money, not so much in salary, which is limited for rookies in the WNBA but in endorsements. I’m sure she’s already the highest earning player in the league and I’m sure that rankles a lot of the veterans. Were I in their situation, I’m sure it would rankle me.

There’s also the weird conspiracy theory involving the University of Connecticut. UConn has, for over three decades now, been the dominant team in women’s college basketball and there are a lot of former Huskies in the WNBA. Their coach, Geno Auriemma, didn’t bother to recruit Clark at all while she was in high school, even though Clark was considered one of the best high school players in the country and she was a big fan of the Huskies. She probably would have crawled through broken glass to play there. Like all great athletes, Clark uses every slight, whether real or imagined, as a motivational tool and her irritation with UConn has likewise irritated Auriemma and many former Huskies, particularly Diana Taurasi (the WNBA’s version of LeBron James), who has been pretty open in her disdain for Clark.

As I mentioned, I don’t have a preference for any of the theories and I suspect there may be some truth in multiple theories. You can take your pick.

The last straw happened this weekend, when the roster for the women’s Olympic basketball team got leaked to the press and Clark wasn’t on it. To be fair, the lineup is loaded with superstar players and maybe it just turned into a numbers game, although it’s hard to imagine that they couldn’t find a limited role for the best shooter in women’s basketball history, even if the team is loaded with excellent outside shooters. The leaked unofficial reason that was given was that the committee that selected the team was concerned that Clark’s fan base would be outraged when she only got five to ten minutes of playing time each game. If true, then that is the most imbecilic decision by a committee since the COVID response. So the way they decided to avoid criticism when Clark didn’t get much playing time was to ensure that she got NO playing time? That is some seriously enhanced marijuana they are smoking at those committee meetings.

From a results standpoint, it won’t matter. The U.S. women’s team has an Olympic record of 70-3 and they’ve won seven straight gold medals. They are the closest thing to a lock for a gold medal in all of the Olympics. TV viewership for their games has been terrible from one Olympics to the next and, without Clark, I’m sure that will continue in Paris. It will probably be up a little bit just because of all the controversy. It’s also not certain that she still won’t make the team. One of the players that did make the team is in the tail end of her rehab from a knee injury. If she can’t play, they might pick Clark to replace her. Or maybe they decide to be stubborn about it and pick someone else. I find it interesting and a little disturbing that they picked someone who hasn’t played a game in nine months over Clark, which is why I think they are going be stubborn and refuse to put Clark on the team no matter what happens.

One last thought for you conspiracy theorists out there. One of the members of the committee, Jennifer Rizzoti, is a former Husky. And Auriemma doubtlessly had a lot of influence on the committee.

I’m not sayin’… I’m just sayin’…