Over the weekend, news broke that Indiana Fever rookie guard and NCAA Basketball all-time scoring leader Caitlin Clark would not be a member of the USA Basketball Women’s National Team for the Olympic Games Paris 2024. Although Clark is one of the alternates that could be selected if a player is injured and unable to play, the roster snub has elicited conversation surrounding the WNBA superstar on a variety of different programs. Joe Rose, hosting his eponymous WQAM morning drive show alongside Danny “Hollywood” Rabinowitz, discussed Clark not being selected for the roster.
As the segment began, Rose mentioned how the show does not discuss much national news before proceeding to talk about the situation at hand. Clark has been at the center of sports debate over the last week for a variety of reasons, including Chicago Sky guard Chennedy Carter committing a flagrant foul on her during a game. Throughout her rookie year with the Indiana Fever, she has had to combat misogynistic points of view and presumptuous questions from members of the media, which began at her introductory press conference days after the WNBA Draft.
“I’m just, ‘So what?,’” Rose said pertaining to the situation surrounding Clark. “I know everybody’s got an opinion on this, and it’s brought out, you know, hear a lot of women jumping on guys now. ‘All of a sudden, you guys care about this story,’ and, ‘Where have you been for women’s sports?,’ and now all of a sudden, you don’t like the way we’re – if she’s not one of the best, she shouldn’t be on the team.”
Rabinowitz contested this point by explaining that if the goal was to grow the sport of women’s basketball, Clark would be included on the team. After all, games featuring the Iowa Hawkeyes during the NCAA Division I women’s basketball tournament frequently averaged high levels of viewership. The Hawkeyes were part of the National Championship Game that averaged 18.7 million viewers across ABC and ESPN earlier in the year, which was preceded by several record-breaking telecasts in the earlier rounds of the tournament.
The WNBA Draft averaged 2.45 million viewers this year on ESPN, which represents a 328% increase from the previous year. Additionally, Clark’s debut drew 2.13 million viewers across ESPN networks., marking the most-watched WNBA game since Memorial Day in 2001 and the first time a WNBA game surpassed an average of 1 million viewers in 16 years. Rose, however, believes that the best players should be selected on the team and that Clark’s impact on viewership should not affect the roster.
“There’s enough people on the team where you could have found a spot for her,” Rabinowitz said on The Joe Rose Show on WQAM. “It’s not like she’s terrible – and here’s the other part of it. I don’t want to be one of these ESPN people that claims they think they’re an expert on women’s basketball. I have no idea who’s good in the WNBA and who’s not. I just know that she draws eyeballs to the TV, and if you’re trying to grow the sport, having her on the team would have been beneficial.”
Indiana Fever head coach Christie Sides explained that Clark told her that they “woke a monster” upon the decision to omit Clark from the Team USA roster. Rose conveyed that if Clark had made the team, she would sit at the end of the bench and only enter the game if the team was up by 30 points.
‘“Stay around,’” Rose said, mimicking a broadcaster. “Caitlin’s going to get in even though the game was over like an hour ago.’”
“You can make that joke, but people care,” Rabinowitz replied. “People want to watch her play. That’s why the arenas are selling out; that’s why the league has the popularity it does, but this is, by the way, this has turned into a race to see who can come up with the worst take on this whole women’s basketball and all this other stuff, man. Everyone’s got a wild opinion.”
Although Rose mentioned that the top college coaches are making comments on Clark and that some women in the league are jealous that Clark is being viewed as a savior for the sport, he also stated that Clark would likely have many more Olympics ahead if she ends up being a good player. Rose, who has been a member of WQAM since 1992, the year in which the station moved to an all-sports format, revealed that he had not talked about women’s basketball previously in his radio career.
Within the segment, Rose compared the situation to what happened with the USA Basketball Men’s National Team in the 1992 Olympics, colloquially referred to as the “Dream Team,” and asked if it was such a big deal that it should be a topic. Even though he said that he does not really care about the topic personally, he believes that the most-deserving women should go to the Olympics in a quest to win a medal.
“There are a lot of people that are watching this stuff for the first time, and it’s 150% because of her” Rabinowitz said after receiving a text from a listener who claimed that Clark was the only reason they were interested in women’s basketball.
“‘Hey girls, you girls on the Olympic team, we got a spot for Caitlin because I know you don’t like to hear this, but she’s really good for business,’” Rose said, seemingly impersonating a selection committee member. “‘We don’t think she’s one of the top-12 players, but she’s good for business. More eyeballs, more money down the road for us in the WNBA, so suck it up girls. Suck it up, ladies. There you go.’”
