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Will Caitlin Clark make the Team USA Olympic roster? Here are our picks
The Olympics kick off in 80 days, and Team USA’s women’s basketball roster is still TBD. The final pre-roster-announcement training camp was held in Cleveland during the Final Four in April, and whispers are that the final roster could hit by early June.
With the depth of talent in the U.S., the selection committee has the challenging job of putting together the best 12-person team — not just the 12 best players — because this is about Team USA winning its eighth consecutive gold medal and 10th overall. Chemistry and filling specific needs are key.
The committee tends to bookend the rosters with veterans, who might not play as much as they did a cycle or two before, and one or two young players, who also aren’t likely to be high-usage contributors but are seen as the future of the program.
In between, there are “locks,” the players who are the best in the world. Then, there is the pool of players who fill a need on the roster and have also been consistent performers at the training camps Team USA hosts throughout the year.
Despite how straightforward that might seem, there’s no exact science for the committee. One of Team USA’s biggest challenges is that their depth changes the training camp roster from camp to camp. Elsewhere, countries have more of the same personnel year over year, meaning some nations coming into the Paris Games have had the same core — growing up together, playing together — for years. For Team USA, finding a proper personnel grouping is particularly important because there won’t be a long runway for the final 12 to jell and deliver on expectations.
When I began making my projection, I looked at previous rosters, and my eyes were particularly drawn to the 2016 Olympic team. At that time, the Minnesota Lynx were dominant, in the middle of their run of four titles in seven seasons. The 2016 Olympic roster was one-third Lynx members: Maya Moore, Seimone Augustus, Lindsay Whalen and Sylvia Fowles. Those were certainly four of the best players in the country, but that group specifically had chemistry that brought players together on and off the floor. Considering the player pool and the current state of the WNBA, I think the 2024 roster will have flavors of 2016, just substituting the Las Vegas Aces for the Lynx.
Eleven weeks out from the 2024 Olympic Games, this is my prediction for the roster.
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The vets
Diana Taurasi: Taurasi will be 42 at the start of the Games and appearing in her sixth Olympics. She has been a consistent member at Team USA training camps not just through this most recent Olympic cycle but over the last two decades. At the Olympic qualifying tournament in February, only Ariel Atkins and Jackie Young averaged fewer minutes than Taurasi, but at this point, her value as a leader is unmatched, and the only way she isn’t on this roster is if she turned down an invite (and it’s hard to imagine that).
Brittney Griner: In April 2023, after Griner returned home after her 10-month detainment in Russia, she said the only time she’d play overseas again was in the Olympics. Griner, 33, likely will get that chance this summer as she’s still one of the best centers in the game.
The locks
A’ja Wilson: At 27, Wilson is currently the best player in the world. (The best counterargument is the next player on this list.) Her ability to get a bucket at will, outrebound anyone, even if there’s a size differential, and defend at an elite level makes her a no-brainer. In her second Olympics, she’ll be relied upon to be even more of a leader and to cultivate team chemistry. If Wilson can help bring some of the togetherness, camaraderie and joy to Team USA in the same way she has for the Aces, that could be key.
Breanna Stewart: Outside of Taurasi, no one on this year’s roster will have more Team USA international experience than Stewart. The 29-year-old has two Olympic gold medals, three World Cup gold medals and a rare silver medal from the 2015 Pan American Games. Plus, she has offseason overseas experience in China, Russia and Turkey, which helps her in international competitions. Stewart’s versatility as an offensive threat is undeniable, and she’s a rangy defender who can guard any position. Another obvious selection.
Chelsea Gray: As the WNBA’s Point Gawd, Gray, 31, is the likely starting PG. She didn’t travel for the Olympic qualifying tournament as she still wasn’t cleared for five-on-five at that point during her recovery from a foot injury she suffered during the 2023 WNBA Finals. She was good to go for the Cleveland camp, so if Gray is healthy, she should be on this roster as the lead floor general.
Napheesa Collier: As one of the youngest players on the 2021 Olympic roster, Collier was brought along to gain senior team international experience. She played fewer than four minutes a game in Tokyo, but in her second Olympic appearance, expect her to play a much larger role. Collier, 27, has established herself as one of the most dominant players in the WNBA and as the focal point for Cheryl Reeve’s Lynx. She was one of the best performers in the Olympic qualifying tournament, playing more than 23 minutes a game (second most behind Stewart).
Alyssa Thomas: The 32-year-old could make her first Olympic appearance, and I feel confident she’ll be on the final roster. Reeve brought Thomas back into the Team USA fold after she had been out of the pool for years. Thomas brings a unique skill set and a decade of WNBA and overseas experience. She’s universally respected across the league for being a grinder and student of the game. While she wouldn’t be a veteran in the sense of her Olympic or Team USA international experience, she would bring a veteran presence alongside Taurasi and Griner.
Breanna Stewart and A’ja Wilson will lead the U.S. women’s basketball team to Paris on its quest for an eighth consecutive Olympic gold medal. (Mike Lawrie / Getty Images)
In the fold
Jewell Loyd: Loyd, 30, made her Olympic debut in Tokyo, but her involvement with Team USA goes back more than a decade. She was a member of the youth national team that won gold at the U17 World Cup in 2010 and later two golds with the senior team (2018, 2022) as well as a gold medal with the 3×3 team (2014 World Cup). She’s a dynamic and efficient scorer. Of the players who appeared in all three games during the Olympic qualifying tournament, she was the second leading scorer despite playing the fourth-fewest minutes of all players.
Kelsey Plum: At 29, Plum is playing the best basketball of her career, and that has been on full display through this Olympic cycle. She won gold with the Team USA 3×3 team in Tokyo and used that as a launching point for two WNBA All-Star seasons. In Belgium at the Olympic qualifying tournament, she led the team with 4.7 assists per game.
Jackie Young: Rounding out the Aces’ core for Team USA will be Young. Like Plum, she’s a reigning 3×3 gold medalist who got a taste of the Olympics in Tokyo. Young, 26, is another 3-point threat (45 percent from distance in the WNBA last season) who hits the boards well, sets up teammates and could be a pesky perimeter defender. With the roster’s size and forward-heavy presence among the veterans and locks, Team USA might prioritize perimeter players in these spots.
The youngins
Aliyah Boston: Since 2004, the Olympic rosters have included either that summer’s WNBA Rookie of the Year or the previous season’s WNBA Rookie of the Year. (We’ll count Collier’s 2019 ROY for the 2021 roster.) This summer, it might have both. Boston, 22, is the reigning WNBA Rookie of the Year, who was also named an All-Star. With such a stacked front line ahead of her, Boston likely won’t get a ton of minutes in France, but that’s not really the point. By gaining Olympic experience, Boston sets the table to become the featured big-in-waiting behind Griner, Wilson and Stewart when they depart the team.
Caitlin Clark: There’s no doubt that whether Clark is on or off the roster will make headlines. Putting Clark on the roster could be a polarizing decision for the committee because she hasn’t been in a senior team camp yet, and that goes against the “pay your dues with Team USA” ideal. Rostering Clark could also be seen as a bold move, specifically because of the previous shocking snubs we’ve seen (Candace Parker in 2016, Nneka Ogwumike in 2021). Although Ariel Atkins not making her second Olympics, or Kahleah Copper or Sabrina Ionescu not making their first might not rise up to the Parker-Ogwumike level, this still would be a pretty interesting decision.
Clark hasn’t played in a regular-season WNBA game yet, but it must give the committee some level of comfort that she appears to be clicking with her Indiana Fever squad exceptionally well so far. Plus, it would help that her fellow young player on the Team USA roster would be Boston, a Fever teammate. Clark would unquestionably bring attention to Team USA just as she did to the college game and to the WNBA already — the committee has to know that. She also could be a useful player in key spots for Team USA as a switch-up point guard and a 3-point specialist.
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(Top photos of Caitlin Clark, A’ja Wilson and Brittney Griner: Gregory Shamus, Ethan Miller, Mike Lawrie / Getty Images)
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The face of baseball will not be at Tuesday’s All-Star Game.
Shohei Ohtani was scratched from his start on Friday as the Los Angeles Dodgers said he will also miss the Midsummer Classic with what the team called left knee irritation.
Ohtani, for obvious reasons, has become an All-Star Game fixture. He has earned the honor in each of the past five seasons and made his first start in 2021.
Starting pitcher Shohei Ohtani #17 of the Los Angeles Dodgers warms up before the MLB game against the Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field on June 03, 2026 in Phoenix, Arizona. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images) (Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
The two-way phenom is on his way to winning his fifth MVP award in his last six seasons as he is hitting .290 with a .939 OPS and pitching to a minuscule 1.79 ERA, the second-lowest in the sport among pitchers with 80-plus innings. His OPS is also the seventh-best mark in the league.
The Dodgers said Ohtani will be the team’s designated hitter up until the break, but he will “have some interventions on his knee to put him in the best position for the second half of the season.”
Ohtani dealt with knee issues earlier in the season.
It is certainly a big hit for the game as the other face of the sport, Aaron Judge, will miss the game due to a fractured rib that has kept him out since late May.
Shohei Ohtani #17 of the Los Angeles Dodgers gets ready in the on deck circle against the Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field on June 01, 2026 in Phoenix, Arizona. (Photo by Norm Hall/Getty Images) (Norm Hall/Getty Images)
DODGERS WILL AGAIN VISIT WHITE HOUSE TO CELEBRATE WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONSHIP, OFFICIAL SAYS
Ohtani hit 99 home runs combined in 2024 and 2025, leading the National League with a 1.025 OPS in that span. Ohtani did not pitch in 2024 after elbow surgery but returned to the bump last year and owned a 2.87 ERA and 11.9 K/9, a figure he also put up in 2022 that led the American League.
The “Japanese Babe Ruth” is the only player in MLB history to have 300-plus plate appearances and 40-plus innings in six separate seasons (Ruth only did it twice and never stole 50 bases), and he has more than excelled at both.
Shohei Ohtani pitches for the Los Angeles Dodgers against the San Francisco Giants at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, California, on May 13, 2026. (Gary A. Vasquez/Imagn Images)
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Ohtani is not hitting like he has in the past, but certainly the best pitching performance of his career will make up for it. He “only” has 20 homers and 56 RBI this season.
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If Mikel Merino is sleeping, please don’t wake him. If the last week has been a dream, he’d just as soon keep dreaming.
Because on Friday, for the second time in five days, Merino came off the bench for the final five minutes of a World Cup knockout game and scored the winning goal, the latest lifting Spain to a 2-1 victory over Belgium and into next week’s semifinal against France in Arlington, Texas.
“Not even in my wildest dreams could I have imagined what’s happening right now, right?” Merino said in Spanish. “Honestly, it’s crazy.”
How crazy? Merino has played less than 10 minutes in the last two games and has two goals. He’s taken four shots in the World Cup and put two of them in the back of the net, the first in stoppage time to beat Portugal in the Round of 16 and in the 88th minute Friday to beat Belgium in a quarterfinal and extend Spain’s unbeaten to streak to 36 games.
“I don’t really even know what to say. I still can’t quite believe it,” Merino said.
Yet Spain’s final substitution, which brought on Merino in the 86th minute, wasn’t the only one that figured heavily in the result. Fifteen minutes earlier Belgian coach Rudi Garcia sent backup goalkeeper Senne Lammens on for Thibaut Courtois — not by choice, by necessity.
The dropoff in talent wasn’t great — Lammens started 32 times for Manchester United this season — but the difference in experience was. Courtois was playing in his 21st World Cup game, second-most all-time, and he had been brilliant up to then.
But he tweaked a muscle making a save minutes earlier and dropped to the turf just before the second-half hydration break. After being attended to by the team’s trainers, he tried to continue but couldn’t, eventually hobbling to the sideline and collapsing on the bench in tears.
“We didn’t want his injury to get worse. That’s why I subbed him off,” Garcia said.
“It’s part and parcel of high-level sport. You need to be concentrated, 100% focused, and need to be able to perform. I did not want to put players on the pitch who were not 100%.”
The margin between Belgium and Spain, after all, is a small one, even if the teams took completely different routes to the quarterfinal.
Spain, which hadn’t gone past the Round of 16 in a World Cup since 2010 when it won its only title, had gone a record six games and 609 minutes without allowing a World Cup goal, dating to the group stage of the last tournament four years ago.
Spain midfielder Mikel Merino scores off a rebound in front of Belgium goalkeeper Senne Lammens during the second half of Spain’s 2-1 quarterfinal win in the World Cup quarterfinals Friday at SoFi Stadium.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
You could binge watch two seasons of “Abbott Elementary” in that time.
But if Spain, the reigning European champion, and goalkeeper Unai Simón were the immovable objects, Belgium, playing in the quarterfinals for the third time in four World Cups, was an unstoppable force. With 12 goals in the last three games, it entered the quarterfinals with the third-most goals in the tournament. And no team had taken more shots.
Spain struck first, with Fabián Ruiz giving La Roja a 1-0 lead with his first goal of the tournament in the 30th minute. The sequence started with Pedro Porro sending a cross into the box for Dani Olmo, whose shot was parried away by Courtois. But Ruiz pounced on the rebound and deflected a shot off defender Timothy Castagne and into the back of the net.
In any other game of this tournament, that would have been enough for Simón. But not against Belgium, which ended Spain’s shutout streak in the 41st minute on a brilliant header from Charles De Keterlaere, who shielded Pau Cubarsí with his body and one-hopped a Castagne cross past a flat-footed Simón for his third goal in two games.
“The record and the milestones are there,” Spanish coach Luis de la Fuente said of his goalkeeper’s record streak. “It’s been decades since the last record was set. And perhaps somebody will break the clean-sheet record.
“But it’s going to be many, many years before that happens.”
Belgium opened the game up a bit when Garcia brought Romelu Lukaku, the country’s all-time leading scorer, on at the hour mark. But Courtois was called to make two saves in the next three minutes and came up lame after the second.
Shorty after he came off, De la Fuente summoned Merino over.
“He didn’t say much to me,” Merino said. “He told me I was coming in as the No. 10. And then, as the game was coming to an end, he told me I was incredible.
“Those are the only two things he said to me.”
The first shot Lammens faced came moments later, when Cubarsí put a one-hop shot on goal from distance. The keeper dove to his right to stop it with both hands, but the ball skipped just before it reached he and Lammens had trouble with the rebound, pushing it toward the edge of the six-yard box for Merino, who tapped it in.
“Unfortunately, to beat a team of this caliber, you need luck on your side,” Garcia, the Belgian coach, said. And the stars didn’t align for us.”
So while Belgium goes home, Spain goes to Texas for Tuesday’s semifinal with France, the only team in the world ranked ahead of it.
“Ever since the World Cup started, everyone has been waiting for this match,” Spanish wunderkind Lamine Yamal said. “I’ve been really looking forward to it. To me, they’re the two best teams in the World Cup.
“If anyone can take on France with confidence, it’s us.”
Especially if Merino keeps dreaming.
Sports editor Iliana Limón Romero contributed to this story.
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Oba Femi and Brock Lesnar’s feud will come to a head at SummerSlam in August, and the showdown has the potential to be WWE’s match of the year.
Femi beat Lesnar at WrestleMania 42 and led to “The Beast Incarnate” deciding to retire – at least for a moment – at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. Lesnar made a dramatic return a few weeks later, challenging and beating Femi at Clash in Italy.
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Oba Femi looks on during Monday Night RAW at Allstate Arena on July 6, 2026, in Chicago, Illinois. (Melina Pizano/WWE via Getty Images)
At SummerSlam, Femi and Lesnar will do battle inside a Hell in a Cell.
WWE Hall of Famer John Bradshaw Layfield called the next meeting between Femi and Lesnar a “generational matchup.”
“I’ve never seen anything like Oba – well, I have. I’ve seen Brock,” he told Fox News Digital. “It’s very much the carbon copy of Brock coming in. Brock coming in was like, oh my God, who is this guy? The guy can even talk, and he’s gonna be one of the biggest stars in wrestling. Not only could he talk, he’s a really smart guy. Brock became one of the biggest draws in professional wrestling. He came one of the biggest draws in UFC. It’s an unbelievable story, and now you got somebody who can rival that character.
Brock Lesnar in action against Oba Femi during “Monday Night Raw” at TD Garden on March 23, 2026, in Boston, Massachusetts. (Michael Owens/WWE via Getty Images)
“This Oba Femi comes out with the silly little walk he does. Everyone kinda does it, it’s like The Bushwackers. But the whole arena does it. I was in Vegas and I didn’t want to go to the matches and deal with the traffic and deal with the backstage area, and so I kinda just watched it in a sports bar. I stood in the back where nobody could recognize me, and as soon as Oba came out, the entire sports bar was sitting there doing that Oba Femi dance. The guy is just unbelievably over.
“I really think that somewhere in the NFL this year, you’re going to see an entire NFL arena doing this dance. You’re gonna have somebody like Saquon Barkley or ‘King’ (Derrick Henry) or some of these guys do this dance, and it’s infectious. Once one of them does, one of these great running backs or wide receivers, or somebody scores a touchdown, that’s when I think you’re gonna see entire arenas doing it. I just think Oba Femi is lightning in a bottle and Brock has always been that way. This is, to me, a generational matchup.”
Brock Lesnar and Oba Femi face off during WrestleMania 42: Night 2 at Allegiant Stadium on April 19, 2026, in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Georgiana Dallas/WWE via Getty Images)
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SummerSlam will take place on Aug. 1 and 2 at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.
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