Caitlin Clark Should Skip the 2028 Olympics

Caitlin Clark should skip the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. Team USA left her off the roster in Paris, then brought her to the 2026 FIBA Women’s World Cup and still wouldn't let her run the point.

When she found out about 2024, she texted Christie Sides: “Hey coach, they woke a monster.” After the break, she went on a tear and spent the rest of that rookie year proving it. She is going to need that same stubbornness when she gets back to Indiana. It wouldn’t bother me at all if a little of the old Caitlin Clark came back to the surface. In sports-media vernacular—go rogue, if you will.

Stephanie White is the shadow that clings to Clark even when the skies are cloudy. She took the Fever before 2025. She was on Kara Lawson’s staff in Germany. Wherever Clark has gone the last two years, White has been in the room when the race changed. After Clark played 13 games in 2025 and went down, White called the absence a “blessing in disguise.” What coach says that about her star? Would she have said it if Mitchell went down and Clark had to drag them through the playoffs? I would not take that bet.

I am not pretending this World Cup was aimed only at Clark. Paige Bueckers and Angel Reese sat too. Rhyne Howard barely saw the floor in the final. Lawson made it a veterans’ tournament. That is her right. It is also a choice.

Spain is the tell. Clark sat most of the first half, took three shots, and finished with one point and one assist. That is not how Caitlin Elizabeth Clark plays basketball.

Around the 5:26 mark of the third quarter, Jackie Young has the ball at the top of the key. Clark is on the wing, arms up, nobody home. Spain has sagged so far off her it looks like a dare. Young looks that way, then throws a dangerous pass into the paint to Stewart instead. It is the kind of pass that only works because Stewart has a wingspan. Clark is still standing there with her hands in the air.

That is how it looked the whole tournament. Not every possession. Enough of them. Open, calling for it, the ball going somewhere else—anywhere but Clark. Jackie Young was the worst. Not the only one. Bueckers did it. Boston did it. Copper did it. Reese did it, though she and Clark actually found each other when they were allowed to play together. After a while, you stop wondering if the other bench noticed. Of course they noticed. You don’t leave the best shooter in the gym that open unless you have been told she might not get it anyway.

Caitlin, in typical Clark fashion, still passed first. That part of her did not change.

Against China, she ran the show off the bench: 14 points, 11 assists. That should have ended the argument. It didn’t. They took the keys and started adding weight. You don’t say whoa to a racehorse.

They said whoa anyway.

Sunday against France, she needed 13 minutes to score 12. Chelsea Gray needed 27 minutes to score 12. Gray started every game like the point of the summer was to prove she is every bit the point guard Clark is. Nobody watching with honest eyes believes that. Linda Cohn asked the only question that counted: if Clark changes the tempo, why not from the opening tip?

And who’s to say the same thing will not happen in 2028?

This was never about whether the United States would win the tournament. No one thought they would lose it. It was about winning it a certain way—without handing the ball to the young ones, and especially without handing it to Clark. After the games, Lawson praised the vets. She praised Stewart for “guiding the younger players.” The younger players are professionals. Several of them outplayed the veterans on a night-to-night basis. Stewart having to bring the ball up because Gray couldn't handle first pressure, while Clark sat, isn't a basketball necessity. It is a preference.

Who starts is a coach’s call. There is no rule that says the best or most popular player has to open the game. Fine. Then say what that call actually was. On the men’s side, Michael Jordan does not come off the bench in an Olympic medal game, so a slower veteran can keep the keys. The sporting world would not have treated that as chemistry. It would have treated it as a joke.

Kara Lawson has done this before. Flau’jae Johnson said a USA summer under Lawson messed with her mentally. Kim Mulkey had to put her back together. That was the 2025 AmeriCup, not a rumor. It is not a race thing. Johnson is Black. Reese is Black. Lawson just prefers the old names when the lights are brightest. Italy almost made that strategy look foolish. If she were managing a veteran mutiny instead of a basketball team, she is not the coach for the 2028 Summer Olympics either.

Here is the part most people will miss if they only argue about minutes.

In 2024, they left her off, and she got a month’s vacation. In 2025, her body quit after 13 games. In 2026 she gave them the summer anyway, in the middle of a Fever season, and they used her like a closer. 2028 is Los Angeles. Home Olympics. More cameras. More ceremony. The same “wait your turn” with a bigger crowd. That is not a prize. That is Berlin with better lighting.

The program gets her name on the poster. She gets three shots in a semifinal. The Fever lose August of a title window. Her quad and her groin have already filed the complaint. A gold medal on a team that will not let her run her race is jewelry. It is not a career-defining moment.

A lot of people who sat through Spain already landed in the same place. The people still talking about Los Angeles as a given were not counting the look-offs.

Brent and Anne flew to Berlin. They have not said a word. In the third quarter against Spain, the camera found them anyway. Their faces did the talking.

If these same starters already won the 2024 Olympics, and then won this tournament the same way, why do they need Clark in 2028?

They don’t. Not to win it.

They need her to sell it.

If they would not let her run the point in Berlin, they do not get to rent her name in Los Angeles.

She needs to take that monster back home to Indiana and run her race there. Not theirs.