Does Caitlin Clark belong on Team USA? Dawn Staley says maybe, ‘if we had to do it all over again’

Caitlin Clark isn’t playing at the Paris Olympics.

But maybe she should be.

It’s a sentiment many basketball fans expressed back in early June, when the public learned that the Indiana Fever rookie star was left off the U.S. Olympic team.

It’s also a sentiment that appears to be shared by at least one member of the committee that selected the players currently in France looking to extend Team USA’s gold medal streak to eight straight Olympics.

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Speaking to NBC’s Mike Tirico during halftime of the U.S.-Serbia men’s basketball game Sunday, South Carolina coach Dawn Staley said Clark’s chances of making the team would have been a lot higher if she and her fellow committee members were selecting the roster today rather than several weeks ago.

“Caitlin is just a rookie in the WNBA, wasn’t playing bad, but wasn’t playing like she’s playing now,” said Staley, who won three Olympic gold medals as a player (1996, 2000, 2004) and another as the head coach (2021).

Clark was a superstar at Iowa, where she led the Hawkeyes to back-to-back NCAA championship games while becoming the highest-scoring college basketball player of all time. Her massive popularity followed her to the WNBA, but she struggled at first to consistently duplicate her former success at the pro level.

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The Team USA roster was leaked to the public on June 8, after 12 WNBA games had been played. At that point, Clark was averaging 16.8 points a game. She had scored as many as 30 points twice but didn’t break into double digits three times, including only three points against the New York Liberty on June 2.

In the 14 games since then, Clark has brought her season scoring average up to 17.1 points a game, with a seven-point output against the Atlanta Dream on June 13 as her only single-digit performance during that period.

The biggest statistical difference between then and now for Clark has been in assists. She averaged 6.3 a game during the first 12 games of the season and 9.8 a game in the 14 games since. Her overall average of 8.2 assists a game is the best in the WNBA, and she set the league record with 19 in a loss to the Dallas Wings on July 17.

“If we had to do it all over again, the way that she’s playing, she would be in really high consideration of making the team, because she is playing head and shoulders above a lot of people,” Staley said. “[She’s] shooting the ball extremely well, I mean she is an elite passer, she’s just got a great basketball IQ, and she’s a little more seasoned in the pro game than she was two months ago.”

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In the league’s All-Star game on July 20, Clark had a game-high 10 assists for Team WNBA, which defeated the U.S. national team 117-109. She hasn’t played since and won’t until the WNBA resumes its season after the Olympics.

“Now time for some rest and relaxation :),” Clark posted on X after the All-Star game. “See you all in a month.”

The Fever’s first game after the break is against the Phoenix Mercury on Aug. 16. The U.S. women’s team opened its Olympics slate Monday afternoon against Japan.

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.