Team USA named the 12 players on the women’s basketball team for the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics, and WNBA rookie Caitlin Clark was left off the team.
Yet half of the team — at least six players — are LGBTQ and out. That will make the USA women’s basketball team just about the gayest team at the Olympics.
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Get off the sidelines and into the game
Of course, Clark not making the roster has garnered headlines. This should not be a surprise to anyone. Veteran leadership means a lot, particularly when players are thrown together from across the WNBA. Experience means a lot.
Clark has had a decent first few weeks with Indiana. She’s 13th on the WNBA scoring list with a field goal percentage of 37%. That’s not great. She’s fourth in the league in assists. She’s having a good rookie season.
Yet people like Jason Whitlock saying the Black LGBTQ community has forced Team USA to abandon Clark is absurd. In the crudest-possible terms, Whitlock lashed out about Clark — a rookie in the WNBA —being left off a team of legends. But, we’re talking about him, and that’s what he wants.
It echoed nonsense from Clay Travis that Clark is being bullied by Black lesbians in the league. There are White players on the team, like Breanna Stewart and Diana Taurasi.
There are other players left off the team who could claim they got dissed. This happens every time there is a “selection.”
Regardless, the United States will be represented by 12 women on the basketball court, and half of them are publicly out. And that’s not even including the two out LGBTQ people — head coach Cheryl Reeve and assistant coach Curt Miller — who are also publicly out.
Here are the six out Team LGBTQ players headed to the Paris Summer Olympics.
Breanna Stewart is one of the best women’s basketball players of all time. She’s won two gold medals with Team USA, and she’s won two WNBA Championships, with Seattle. She was the Finals MVP both years.
Diana Taurasi is considered by many to be THE best women’s basketball player of all time. The all-time WNBA points leader by a mile, Taurasi has won three WNBA titles and been named an All-Star 10 times, all with the Phoenix Mercury. She is competing in her sixth Summer Olympics, and she’s won gold every previous time.
Alyssa Thomas has been in the WNBA for a decade and has been named an All-Star four times. She was selected in the 2014 WNBA pick fourth overall. Yet this will be the Connecticut Sun star’s first Olympic Games. If it took Thomas 10 years, you have to wonder why people are screaming about Clark not getting it in 10 weeks. Thomas is engaged to Sun teammate DeWanna Bonner.
Maybe the highest-profile player in WNBA history after her incarceration in Russia, Brittney Griner again takes the international stage just 18 months after being freed. She hasn’t won a WNBA title since her second season, in 2014, though she’s been named an All-Star almost every season she played: nine times. This will be her third Olympics, having won gold twice before.
Jewell Lloyd is aiming for her second Olympic gold medal, having joined team USA for gold in Tokyo. She’s won two WNBA titles, both with Seattle. She was the WNBA league scoring leader last season.
There haven’t been a ton of WNBA players to win league titles with two different teams, but Chelsea Gray is one of them. She’s got one championship with the Los Angeles Sparks, and now two with the Las Vegas Aces. She was also on the USA team that won gold in Tokyo.
The 2024 Paris Summer Olympics are July 26 to August 11. Outsports will be covering Team LGBTQ extensively before, during and after the Games.
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