They are not dumb, but .....
1) They do have a very clear UConn bias.
USA Women's Basketball publicly stated that Pat Summitt was not eligible to be selected as the Olympic Head Coach in 2000, because she had already coached the team once before, in 1984. However, this did not stop them from allowing Geno Auriemma to coach the Olympic team twice, and in back-to-back Olympiads in 2012 and 2016. Nell Fortner was named the 2000 USA Olympic Women's Basketball Team Head Coach, instead. She has not had a bad coaching career by any means, but should she have been the Olympic Coach in 2000? I think that's debatable at best.
Also, a lack of experience was cited by USA Basketball recently as a reason for keeping Caitlin Clark off the 2024 roster, but both Diana Taurasi and Breanna Stewart were named to an Olympic team when they were WNBA rookies in 2004 and 2016 ..... Hmmmm. What was different about those two players? Where they played in college, perhaps?
Finally, would a player as good as Candace Parker was in 2016, have been left off the Olympic roster (that Geno Auriemma coached) if she was a former UConn player? I tend to doubt that, don't you?
and .....
2) They do not value having any diversity of talent from one Olympiad to the next.
There is no "spreading the wealth around," and giving different players a chance to represent their country in the Olympics. This is true, even though the United States has the deepest pool of women's basketball talent in the world to fill an Olympic roster with. The selection committee does not have to keep bringing back the same players for multiple Olympiads in a row in order to win the Gold Medal .... but that is exactly what they do.
and ....
3) They do not prioritize youth, and the development of the best young American talent in the international game.
Unless, of course, the best young American talent is fresh out of UConn .... but that was covered in line item #1.
