Caitlin Clark not in USA basketball graphic causes controversy for one big reason

One of the biggest controversies surrounding the USA women's basketball team at the Paris Summer Games, where they won the gold medal for an astonishing eight consecutive Olympics, was whether or not Caitlin Clark should have made the team.

Now that the biggest basketball star in the WNBA, and biggest name for the younger generation across either the W or NBA, has been invited to participate in the United States women's national team training camp, it's an odd choice to not include the 23-year-old Iowa Hawkeyes icon to promote the training camp being held in December.

But unlike Christine Brennan's take, which certainly has validity, there is one main reason why it seems absurd not to have the former WNBA Rookie of the Year and two-time All-Star as one of the names highlighted for any promotion.

This is so interesting: if USA Basketball really wanted to go all out promoting WBB, bring new fans in and get unprecedented attention for a team that dropped in TV viewership at the Paris Olympics, they would have added the photo of one other player to this graphic. But no. https://t.co/uiwVs0mi37
— Christine Brennan (@cbrennansports) November 24, 2025

Clark is coming off injuries that had her out most of the WNBA season

Brennan, the famous USA TODAY Sports columnist and Olympics commentator, who has always been a Clark defender (and wrote a book about her), at times controversially herself, writes in her tweet, "This is so interesting: if USA Basketball really wanted to go all out promoting WBB, bring new fans in and get unprecedented attention for a team that dropped in TV viewership at the Paris Olympics, they would have added the photo of one other player to this graphic. But no."

It's always an odd conundrum that both the WNBA and USABWNT seem to go out of their way not to promote Clark, easily the ratings juggernaut needed to keep the momentum going for women's basketball, which has seen hockey-stick growth and valuations for the W's franchises.

But the main reason to include Clark is that she had to sit out the entirety of the Indiana Fever's Cinderella run in the WNBA playoffs all the way to the semi-finals with a groin injury, and after a season where she only played 13 games, it seems like USABWNT would want to make her front and center.

Maybe Clark's people asked to keep her promotion on the DL

In the defense of USABWNT, maybe Clark's camp asked to keep promotion low-key given there will be a lot of eyes on her returning from several injuries that derailed her sophomore campaign.

It is funny to see Kelsey Plum in the graphic though, a known critic of Clark.

Whatever the case, a training camp in December would usually get no headlines. But with Clark, especially returning from injury, it'll be a must watch.

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