Team USA’s women’s basketball squad for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris is set. A week has passed since we all endured the discourse around Caitlin Clark not being included on it, but there were other snubs too.
One that stood out was the exclusion of Dallas Wings guard Arike Ogunbowale, who is second in the WNBA in scoring this season with a career-best average of 26.2 points per game. She also leads the league in steals and minutes played per game.
Fans of Clark and Ogunbowale held onto a bit of hope that one of them might make the Olympic team anyways, should a replacement be needed for an injured Chelsea Gray. Allisha Gray and Ariel Atkins could be options too.
But Ogunbowale revealed in a recent interview on the show Nightcap with Shannon Sharpe and Chad Ochocinco that she removed her name from Team USA’s pool of players “months ago.” And that makes it incredibly unlikely that she’ll be going to Paris this summer.
.@Arike_O talks the politics of basketball 🏀 😤@ShannonSharpe @ochocinco pic.twitter.com/R6JGjHmbwv
— Nightcap (@NightcapShow_) June 13, 2024
Ogunbowale said:
“When it comes to that stuff, it really doesn’t have much to do with your game. It’s really about who they feel like fits with the team. So, I actually took my name out the pool months ago. That’s not saying I didn’t think – maybe last year, I would be on the team and I was good enough to make the team – but when the [2024 Olympic team] list came out, I knew I would not be that one.”
She added that “politics has always surrounded” women’s basketball and “it’s subjective” who the selection committee thinks should be on the team.
The latter is, of course, absolutely true. Ogunbowale, a player in her prime who one could easily argue is playing the best basketball of her life at this very moment, was passed over for the likes of Diana Taurasi for this Olympic team. While Taurasi will go down as one of the best women’s basketball players ever, she just turned 42 years old and is averaging a career-low 1.8 assists per game this season, and scoring about nine less points per game than Ogunbowale.
Ogunbowale is 27 years old, a three-time all-star, a WNBA scoring champion and was the Most Outstanding Player at the 2018 Final Four when she was at Notre Dame.
But she’s never played for an Olympic gold medal. Perhaps time will heal some wounds and change some perspectives and she’ll get her shot in 2028.