The Olympic rosters are beginning to take shape, and the story is not only who makes Team USA, but who doesn’t.
Some athletes, like Stephen Curry, made the choice themselves. Others, like Cal swimmer Nathan Adrian, lose out by a hair: Adrian missed his fourth Olympic team by .25 seconds, but had beautiful perspective, as both a testicular cancer survivor and new father of a baby girl.
And then there’s the case of Stanford’s Nneka Ogwumike.
“I’m physically sick about this,” Ogwumike’s college coach Tara VanDerveer said this week. “It’s like a punch in the gut.”
Ogwumike was shockingly, inexplicably left off the U.S. women’s basketball roster for Tokyo, when the team was announced on Monday. One of the most accomplished players in the women’s game, this was expected to be Ogwumike’s year – she was left off the team in both 2012 and 2016.
The omission rattled the women’s basketball world.
Derek Fisher, the coach of Ogwumike’s WNBA Sparks team, called it “a travesty.”
Dawn Staley, the coach of the Olympic team who does not sit on the selection committee, said the omission, “breaks my heart.”
Damian Lillard, a member of the men’s Olympic team, tweeted, “they doin Nneka Ogwumike dirty smh.”
Lisa Leslie tweeted, “She is beyond deserving! I’m not sure who’s responsible but I just know it’s not right!”
Ogwumike’s former teammate Candace Parker said the decision, “was bulls—” adding, “How many times are we going to say it’s unfair? How many times are we going to say it’s not politics?”
And that’s the real issue. Not injury, but politics.
Yes, Ogwumike, 30, has been battling a knee sprain, but was expected to be back in time for the Olympics. What public comments anyone on the selection committee made, implied Ogwumike’s injury was a factor. Yet there appears to be a double standard. Diana Taurasi, 39, has a fractured sternum and also is unable to practice for several weeks, yet she made her fifth Olympic team.
So where does the politics come in? As usual, in the world of women’s basketball, it has to do with Geno Auriemma and UConn.
Auriemma, who coached the team to gold medals in 2012 and 2016, is on the selection committee and remains a special adviser to the Olympic team. He has enormous influence over everything that happens with the team, and it seems to be no coincidence that whenever a player is left off the team, they are replaced by a UConn player.
In this case, Napheesa Collier made her first team, likely at the expense of Ogwumike. Collier is a UConn alumnus and plays for the Minnesota Lynx. The five-person selection committee includes Auriemma, Lynx assistant Katie Smith, and Connecticut Sun coach Curt Miller, whose WNBA team is closely tied to the UConn program.
In 2012, half the 12-person roster were UConn products. In 2016, there were five UConn players. This year, there will again be five of Auriemma’s players (plus half the roster in the new 3×3 version is from UConn). It gives credence to the longstanding belief that Auriemma uses promises of Olympic medals in his recruiting pitches.
Make no mistake about it, UConn produces great basketball players. But they aren’t the only program that creates great players, especially in this era of women’s basketball with so much talent.
Team USA has crushed its opponents for years. And it likely will again. But that’s not the issue.
The imbalance on the roster, the lack of transparency in the selection process, and the shocking exclusion of one of the game’s greats is not a good look for women’s basketball. All the recent cries for transparency and explanations for why things happen the way they do in women’s sports apparently don’t apply to USA Basketball. When asked the decision, Miller deferred to national team director Carol Callan. When asked for comment, a program spokesperson told ESPN that Callan would not discuss the selection process.
Stanford has not had a player on the roster since Tara VanDerveer was the head coach in 1996, when she had two former players. That seems odd. It’s also worth noting that once her stint as an Olympic gold medal-winning coach was over, VanDerveer has never been a “special advisor” or placed on the selection committee for the team.
But this isn’t about Stanford. Ogwumike’s credentials stand alone.
She is the only WNBA MVP to never make an Olympic team. She has been on two FIBA World Cup gold medal teams. She is a six-time all-star, a former No. 1 pick and Rookie of the Year and has been totally, unconditionally committed to Team USA, making every camp for the last five years.
In the 2019-20 offseason she passed the chance to make more money overseas to be part of the Team USA barnstorming tour, which played collegiate teams before the pandemic shut things down. During that time, Ogwumike led the team in pretty much every key category. She was the MVP of the Olympic qualifying tournament.
“She has been so loyal, and that loyalty isn’t reciprocated,” VanDerveer said. “It’s so disrespectful.
“She deserves it, she’s earned it, she has waited in line. She doesn’t need to be on the Olympics to validate who she is. But it is so painful for all of us who love her.”
Ogwumike, one of the most gracious athletes I’ve ever covered, did not return a request for comment, and has kept her thoughts private since the announcement. She is a natural leader, is the president of the WNBA Player’s Association and has been key to so much of the important groundbreaking work the WNBA has been involved in in recent years.
Important players get the benefit of the doubt, even if they’re nursing injuries. For example, this week, Julie Ertz and Tobin Heath both made the U.S. women’s soccer roster for Tokyo, even though both are coming back from injuries and unable to practice at the moment.
Like them, Ogwumike deserved the benefit of the doubt. She earned a spot on this team.
Instead, she got caught up in the politics of women’s basketball. Politics that desperately need to change.
Ann Killion is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: akillion@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @annkillion
