Culture
Why Caitlin Clark could pose a dilemma for Team USA at the Olympics
USA Basketball will be seeking its eighth consecutive Olympic gold medal this summer with the first step coming at the Olympic qualifying tournament in Antwerp, Belgium, from Feb. 8-11. The 12-player roster for that tournament will be the first approximation of the team that will defend the Americans’ gold medal in Paris.
Based on the 18 players who have been invited to the national team camp from Feb. 2-4 in Brooklyn, N.Y., the committee has a terrifically challenging task to select that final roster, a decision that will likely be further complicated by the current collegians — primarily Caitlin Clark, but USA Basketball veterans Paige Bueckers and Cameron Brink could also factor in here — who turn pro at the end of the 2023-24 season.
The final roster will ultimately make a statement about what the committee values: youth and the future or experience and proven success. USA Basketball has generally balanced old and young on the international team so that the younger players can carry the torch and preserve the culture. Including — or not including — Clark poses a unique dilemma with the wealth of options before the committee.
18 athletes will be in camp with the 🇺🇸 #USABWNT Feb. 2-4 in prep for the #FIBAOQT in 🇧🇪 Antwerp.
— USA Basketball (@usabasketball) January 23, 2024
On the opposite end of the spectrum from Clark is Diana Taurasi, one of eight Olympians from Tokyo in 2021 who is back in the national team pool. Taurasi is seeking to become the first basketball player of either gender to compete in six Olympics. She would also be the oldest basketball Olympian ever and the third American woman of any sport to participate in six games. Assuming Taurasi is healthy, she is a lock to return to the roster. The 41-year-old even participated in the USA Basketball college barnstorming tour in November against Tennessee and Duke, which presumably was not compulsory for a player with her pedigree.
Taurasi is joined by Ariel Atkins, Napheesa Collier, Chelsea Gray, Brittney Griner, Jewell Loyd, Breanna Stewart and A’ja Wilson from the Tokyo team. Atkins is the only one of those returnees — other than Griner, who has extenuating circumstances, and is another lock to suit up in red, white and blue if she so chooses — whose play has declined since the last Olympiad, but considering she also played for the USA during the 2022 FIBA World Cup, Atkins will likely be prioritized by the committee. However, her status as a 2024 Olympian is probably the most tenuous of these eight players.
That leaves at most five, and likely four, spots for new blood, and the competition is fierce. Kahleah Copper, Sabrina Ionescu, Betnijah Laney, Kelsey Plum and Alyssa Thomas were all additionally part of the World Cup squad. Ionescu averaged the fewest minutes in Australia, but she, Thomas and Plum all have been All-WNBA selections within the past two seasons, with the latter two finishing top-five in MVP voting. Plum’s history with the three-on-three team should also give her a leg up with the committee, which brings us to her fellow gold medalists in that sport’s debut in 2021: Allisha Gray and Jackie Young. Both players seem too good to be left off of the roster, especially Young, but that is always the case with the American national team.
All seven of those players would be reasonable selections for the Olympics, and that doesn’t even include Aliyah Boston, Rhyne Howard and Arike Ogunbowale — three of the younger camp invites. All Boston has done is put together one of the most decorated college careers in recent memory, plus collect multiple gold medals for the U.S. at youth levels, while earning rookie of the year honors and starting in the WNBA All-Star Game. Frankly, Boston seems like another lock, filling in the sixth frontcourt spot behind Wilson, Stewart, Griner, Thomas and Collier. Howard and Ogunbowale — both All-Stars who would be the leading scorers on just about any other national team in the world — are probably on the outside looking in until the 2028 Olympics.
Then, there’s the youth question. The No. 1 picks in the 2004, 2008 and 2016 WNBA drafts made the Olympic teams as rookies (Nneka Ogwumike’s omission in 2012 was curious then, and her absence from subsequent Olympic rosters has made that snub even more ridiculous in hindsight), and a similarly loaded draft class is on deck to carry that tradition. The youngsters take their place at the end of the roster and then grow into the future leaders. Wilson has talked about learning from Taurasi and Sue Bird how to set the standard, which she put into practice along with Stewart at the last World Cup.
It would make sense for Clark to be the latest ingénue to take her place as Team USA’s 12th player, but with the 2004 No. 1 pick Taurasi still kicking, there may not be enough space. Perhaps the committee will take solace in Boston representing the current generation, while a cohort of older guards compete in the backcourt. Deciding between Atkins, Copper, Allisha Gray, Ionescu, Ogunbowale, Plum and Young for what figures to be three spots will be difficult enough without adding Clark to the mix.
Then again, the Caitlin Clark effect is real. How could USA Basketball choose not to capitalize on the rabid popularity of one of the game’s biggest stars when whoever takes her place doesn’t figure to play many minutes anyway? The Olympics are the biggest showcase of women’s basketball worldwide. A player like Clark belongs on that stage if the selection committee wants to build off the momentum the sport is generating stateside.
There will be plenty of superstars on the national team whether Clark makes the cut or not. And the U.S. will be prohibitive favorites regardless of what combination of these players suits up in Paris. The specific composition of this roster, however, will reveal what the committee prioritizes, be it national team history, domestic success, balance of youth/veterans or the most marketable names. All of those possibilities are on the table.
(Photo of Caitlin Clark: Marc Piscotty / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Where do you turn when you need advice? A chatbot? A life coach? A wise and trusted friend?
How about a poet? Poets may not be famous for making the best life choices, but because they subject the mess of human existence to the discipline of language, they can be as helpful as any therapist or mentor.
Good poets know the rules and when to break them, which is something they can teach the rest of us.
To wit:
Giving advice is a peculiar literary undertaking. It flourishes in certain popular genres — graduation speeches, newspaper columns, country and western songs and poems like this one — but what, in these contexts, is it really for?
I’m thinking of situations when you don’t urgently need help but nonetheless enjoy reading answers to questions you may not have thought to ask. What interests you isn’t the content of the advice — you could get all the life hacks you want from A.I. — so much as the voice of the person dispensing it.
Wendy Cope is an English poet, born in 1945, who has been a fixture of her country’s literary scene since the 1980s. More recently, her short, buoyant poem “The Orange” has been widely memed online, bringing her to the attention of new readers beyond Britain.
Cope favors rhyme, meter, brisk jokes and tart aperçus. She addresses romance, friendship and the petty absurdities of modern life with disarming good humor. The last line of “The Orange” is “I love you. I’m glad I exist.” Somehow she makes it the opposite of cringe.
This isn’t the kind of poetry you would describe as “confessional.” And yet …
Question 1/7
Stop, if the car is going “clunk”
Or if the sun has made you blind.
Don’t answer e–mails when you’re drunk.
Tap a word above to fill in the highlighted blank.Want to learn this poem by heart? We’ll help.
Fill in the missing words below. You can always refer to the reading by A.O. Scott and full
text above.Let’s start with the first stanza.
A strong sense of place can deeply influence a story, and in some cases, the setting can even feel like a character itself. This week’s literary geography quiz highlights places where authors were born (or lived) that later became locations in their books. To play, just make your selection in the multiple-choice list and the correct answer will be revealed. At the end of the quiz, you’ll find links to the works if you’d like to do further reading.
AMERICA, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries, by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
For those of us in the national memory-keeping business, anniversaries hold near-totemic power. Satisfyingly round units of time, ideally bearing fancy, Latin-derived names, serve as the overburdened pegs on which to hang think pieces and museum exhibits, revisionist documentaries and maudlin public ceremonies. The arbitrary nature of such occasions is precisely what gives them their charge, inviting us to set aside complacency and submit to a comprehensive check-in.
In his new book, “America, U.S.A.,” Eddie S. Glaude Jr. presents an intriguing variation on the genre, seeing the country’s 250th birthday as an anniversary of anniversaries: 50 years since the malaise-ridden, schlock-heavy Bicentennial. A century since the subdued Prohibition-era Sesquicentennial. A century and a half since telegraphed reports of George Armstrong Custer’s defeat by the Lakota and Cheyenne at Little Bighorn rudely interrupted the Gilded Age Republic’s 100th birthday party.
If an anniversary offers a snapshot of a moment, the core of Glaude’s book is an old-timey photo album, a collection of notable episodes from earlier national reckonings, long-ago glances in the mirror. An estimable scholar of Black history, politics and religion at Princeton — best known for “Begin Again,” his 2020 meditation on James Baldwin’s relevance for our times — Glaude focuses, as his subtitle puts it, on “how race shadows the nation’s anniversaries.”
Such celebrations, he contends, have never really been the moments for honest self-reflection they are often advertised to be. Instead, the nation usually shatters the mirror, refusing to accept what it prefers not to see. “American anniversaries are often moments to turn a blind eye to the evils of the past and the present,” Glaude writes, “to suppress the fact of America’s divided soul.”
It’s a clever concept, and, needless to say, perfectly timed. Last year, Glaude notes, the Trump administration executed a hostile takeover of the government’s studiously bipartisan 250th anniversary planning. It is now preparing a program that is certain to conceal more than it reveals about the country ostensibly being celebrated.
Glaude, in no mood for celebration, argues that such omissions and evasions also defined commemorations in the past. In 1875, Frederick Douglass predicted “one grand Centennial hosannah of peace and good will to all the white race of this country.” He was right: The nation reached 100 years old at a crucial moment in the post-Civil War fight over racial equality, with white Northerners ready to give up on Southern Reconstruction. The occasion would help the once-warring sections to reunite around a shared commitment to white supremacy. On May 10, 1876, at the opening of the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, the police tried to bar Douglass from the grandstand, until a white politician vouched for him.
The 150th anniversary came soon after a resurgent Ku Klux Klan successfully pushed for a restrictive immigration law aimed at keeping America a “Nordic” nation. At the lavishly funded, lightly attended celebrations in Philadelphia, Black veterans of World War I were excluded from marching in the opening parade. A writer with The Associated Negro Press wondered “what was in the breast of those black men who fought to make America safe for Democracy and on Monday stood on the sidelines, forgotten, as the Nordic strode by in all his vain pride.”
By 1976, when the nation marked its Bicentennial, the violence of the ’60s had destroyed any semblance of consensus. Vietnam and Watergate had eroded trust in the government. The commission initially tasked with organizing the anniversary was disbanded amid reports of corruption. Corporations filled the vacuum, Glaude explains, with “star-spangled whoopee cushions; patriotic toilet seats; Liberty hamburgers; red, white and blue beer cans.” The author, around 8 years old at the time, dimly remembers donning a pair of tricolor trousers.
A half-century later, Glaude is refreshingly honest about the depths of his despair. “I do not love America, and never have, especially now,” he writes in one of the more startling opening sentences I’ve read in some time. He dismisses this year’s Semiquincentennial as reaching back “to a storybook America that requires either the banishment of Black people from view or the reduction of our role in the country’s history, so as to affirm America’s ongoing quest to be a more perfect union.”
Undoubtedly true. But Trump doesn’t own the country, at least not yet, nor the 250th anniversary of one of the most radically liberatory and confusingly contradictory events in world history — an inspiration, as Glaude shows, even to critical observers of the American experiment, like Douglass. Far from the revanchist MAGA-palooza in Washington, I suspect this summer’s unasked-for invitation to national soul-searching may surprise us yet.
Despite his despair, Glaude concludes that “the past still offers resources for us to freedom-dream.” So, too, does this book.
AMERICA, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries | By Eddie S. Glaude Jr. | Crown | 270 pp. | $31
-
Alabama13 seconds agoOklahoma State Baseball Live Scoring for NCAA Regional vs. Alabama State
-
Alaska7 minutes agoHere’s Why Alaska Air Shares Popped Higher This Week | The Motley Fool
-
Arizona10 minutes agoArizona Lottery Mega Millions, Pick 3 results for May 29, 2026
-
Arkansas15 minutes ago
No. 5 Arkansas Razorbacks’ Historic Season Comes to an End at WCWS
-
California22 minutes agoSteve Hilton on His Surprisingly Strong Bid for California Governor
-
Colorado25 minutes agoAttorney General Phil Weiser’s underdog campaign for Colorado governor
-
Connecticut30 minutes ago
Where to watch Los Angeles Sparks vs Connecticut Sun on May 30: TV channel, start time and streaming
-
Delaware37 minutes agoHow Delaware fans will get to Philadelphia World Cup matches
