Sha’Carri wins first gold, Olivia Reeves makes US weightlifters proud
Sha’Carri Richardson won her first gold medal in Paris, US weightlifter Olivia ended both a dry spell and a record, and the US basketball team stormed into the final.
PARIS — The game was a rout and seemed to be over soon after it began. The final score was 85-85 for the United States and 64-64 for Australia, but the gap seemed to be larger.
The U.S. women’s basketball team, the most dominant team in any sport in the world, men’s or women’s, has now won an Olympic gold medal for the eighth consecutive year. The Americans have won the previous seven games, and there is no reason to believe they won’t win the eighth game on Sunday.
So why were only 18 journalists crammed into the huge mixed zone inside the Bercy Arena on Friday night to speak to US head coach Cheryl Reeve after the game, while the same area was packed the night before for the US team’s comeback against Serbia?
Why were so many empty seats for the Olympic family, the best seats in the house, left unoccupied throughout the entire semifinal match?
Why is this team so majestic, but so underwhelming at these Games? Why do heads turn for the track and field stars, the gymnasts, the swimmers and the U.S. women’s soccer team, but not for them?
And if we look back a few weeks: Why were there well over 100 reporters present at the US men’s basketball team’s press conference shortly before the start of the Olympic Games, while at the women’s press conference there were perhaps 20 sitting in the first two rows?
Because USA Basketball left home the woman who would have changed all this.
If it wasn’t clear before, it’s certainly clear now: Caitlin Clark should have been here. The attention this team should have had, the crowds, the interest – they’re not there because she’s not here.
USA Basketball could have given women’s basketball the greatest global platform ever, and it hasn’t. If Clark were here, playing even five minutes a game, reporters would have flocked to see her. I think of the Brazilian reporter who asked me the first week why Clark wasn’t here because she wanted to see her and interview her. I think of the Australian journalist who said the same thing.
One lesson we’ve learned over and over again at these Olympics is that cultural star power plays a huge role in driving interest in certain sports. And with Simone Biles and Katie Ledecky, as well as many other track and field stars, retired, Clark could still have played and helped the many experienced elite players on the U.S. women’s team get the attention they deserve.
Having covered the USA women’s basketball at 10 Olympics before this game, I’ve seen it time and time again. The mixed zone chaos on Friday in a relative ghost town was so predictable; I wrote about it when Clark was passed over for the Olympics in early June, and it actually happened. To attract journalists from all over the world to a venue that hosts so many other sports, there has to be something more: a big name, a personality, a storyline, something. USA Basketball had all of that in Clark and chose not to capitalize on it.
We all know the arguments against Clark making the team. She will have many other chances to play in the Olympics. (I add: I hope that is the case.) She needed a break, and she said that was true, but that was a decision she had to make, not USA Basketball’s.
Then there is the argument that she took someone else’s place, which of course happens every time a team is selected in any sport, from high school to the pros to the Olympics.
And the gold medal-worthy reason Clark shouldn’t be here, for those who didn’t want her here: She didn’t play well enough in her first month in the WNBA. Aside from the fact that she actually played well enough despite the league’s toughest defense and most difficult schedule, we now have women’s selection committee member Dawn Staley herself say on the subject.
“If we had to do it all over again,” she told NBC here in Paris, “the way she plays, she would be right up there with the best because she’s way ahead of a lot of the others and she shoots the ball extremely well. I mean, she’s an elite passer, she just has a great basketball IQ. …”
So, to sum up, Clark, the WNBA’s leading assist provider, would have been a wonderful, fresh and exciting addition to the US team on the court. Off the court, she is the biggest crowd puller not only in women’s basketball, but in all of women’s sports. When she plays, women’s sports draw more viewers than men’s sports, as we saw in the spring when she drew four million more viewers to the women’s NCAA final than the men’s NCAA final.
What would this have looked like on the Olympic stage? Wouldn’t it have been worth seeing? What could have been.
