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Caitlin Clark sidelined from women’s Olympic basketball team: reports

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Caitlin Clark, the top female rookie basketball player in the US, has been snubbed from the women’s Olympic team, according to multiple reports.

The Wall Street Journal on Saturday reported Clark, a superstar player who recently inked a $28 million, eight-year Nike deal, was left off of the 12-player team roster headed to the Paris Olympics in July. The outlet reported the selection committee appeared to favor players with more professional experience.

The former Iowa Hawkeyes star told AP in April that playing for the US Olympic 5×5 team was “the goal and the dream. To play with the best in the world and against the best in the world, you can’t script it better than that.”

Clark has not publicly commented on the reports.

It remains unclear why the rookie Indiana Fever guard — who was invited to the national team’s training camp in April but could not attend due to scheduling conflicts with the NCAA tournament — didn’t make the Olympic team.

USA Today, citing two US basketball veterans with decades of experience in the women’s game, reported that part of the selection committee’s decision was concern for how Clark’s fans would react to her receiving limited playing time on the stacked roaster.

“If true, that would be an extraordinary admission of the existence of real tension that the old guard of women’s basketball harbors for this multimillion-dollar sensation,” columnist Christine Brennan wrote.

The Journal reported 41-year-old Diana Taurasi, who has won five Olympic gold medals, as well as Chelsea Gray, Jewell Loyd, Kelsey Plum, and Jackie Young — all of whom have played at the Olympics before — and Sabrina Ionescu, a two-time WNBA All-Star, will represent the US at the Olympics this year.

Representatives for Clark and the US Women’s Basketball Team did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

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