DOT wrote:shrink wrote:DOT wrote:WNBA started in 1997, so there's no reference for how Jones and Lobo would have played, but I will point out that Lobo was 2nd team All-WNBA in 1997
Diana Taruasi was All-WNBA 1st team and 3rd in MVP voting in 2004
Sylvia Fowles was 2nd team All-Defense in 2008 as well as being a 6'6 C, something that would be difficult to match up with
Tina Charles won MVP in 2012, had 2 1st team All-WNBA selections and 1 2nd team All-WNBA, along with 2 2nd team All-Defense selections in 3 seasons
Stewie was 2nd team All-WNBA, 2nd team All-Defense, and 2nd in DPOY voting in 2016
Napheesa Collier was 2nd team All-Defense and 2nd team All-WNBA in 2020
So out of 6 players, 4 were at least 2nd team All-WNBA the year they were selected, one was 2nd team All-Defense, and the other was Kara Wolters, who was probably only on the team due to being a 6'7 C. Meaning the 6 players who we have reference for were either at least 2nd team All-WNBA the year they went, or were just really tall
There's still time for Clark to improve her efficiency and make an All-WNBA team, but that's not guaranteed to happen. She's not even guaranteed to get ROY, so her making it at that age despite no major accomplishments would be an outlier, yes.
Let’s compare apples to apples.
How many of these players you excluded had already won those accolades before they were selected for Team USA? Yes, Clark hasn’t won DPOY or All-WNBA or Rookie of the Year. She’s only won Rookie of the Month, because that’s the only award she could have received at this point in her career.
Will she will DPOY or ALL WNBA at the end of the season? I agree, we don’t know. But neither did the selection committee when they chose women and men at her same age, who also hadn’t yet been eligible for these awards. Young athletes for years have been chosen because they are projected to contribute to the national team, this year and in the future. It seems unfair to dismiss her because she hasn’t acquired WNBA awards in her first month of play, while she has certainly had a greater basketball career than any of them at 22 with her record-breaking college accolades.Spoiler:
Making Team USA is not a WNBA award, though it really seems like the WNBA board can’t see that, and WNBA accomplishments seem to be the metric you are using to justify Clark’s exclusion.
lol you can't bring up the Men's team, who for years has been notorious for not sending their best or the most popular players, and then start whining about "we need to compare apples to apples"
Let's talk apples to apples, Clark is not better than the guards on that list, she would not get any playing time. Of course, you don't know that because you don't actually watch or care about the WNBA, you just want to whine about it. If she were on the team, you'd be in that thread talking about how bad it looks for the WNBA that they're putting her on it just for popularity and not taking just the best basketball players
What a silly dodge! If you’re keeping track at home:
1. You stress that this is normal, because the youngest player on the last women’s team was 24. I point out Breanna,
2. Then you switch your argument to say it’s normal because it’s only happened once in the last two. I expand sample size.
3. Then you say, “men don’t count.” Should the process be different for women?
4. Then you say she hasn’t won WNBA awards compared to the other women. You penalize Clark for not winning awards she couldn’t have received yet, and then list rewards the previous players hadn’t received when they were selected!
5. Then you don’t address that mistake that you gave your list awards they hadn’t earned,
6. … nor do you address all the awards Clark had already earned in college.
7. You ignore the actual long history of young player selection based on projection and longterm contribution.
8. You ignore the fact that Clark’s popularity would be good for women’s basketball, and instead penalize her for it.
So when confronted with all the facts and that the history of selections that don’t support you, your response is, “if things were reversed, he’s just a guy who wants to complain?”
