“PLAY HER OR SHE LEAVES!” Adam Silver Sets The RECORD STRAIGHT For Team USA After Ignoring Caitlin

“PLAY HER OR SHE LEAVES!” Adam Silver Sets The RECORD STRAIGHT For Team USA After Ignoring Caitlin 

Adam Silver has made a statement about Caitlin Clark. You can tell Adam Silver’s very much a fan. I don’t know that he fully understand what’s going what is going on here though. Over it. I’m over it. I’m ready for this whole team USA shindig to be over. I’m ready to move on. I’m ready for Caitlin Clark to get back to the states and tear these chicks up in the WNBA for these last handful of games of the regular season and the playoffs. Let’s go, man.

 I’m sick of this stuff. We got these grizzly old WNBA vets who could never turn over a profit year after year after year. They couldn’t draw nobody to the arenas. All of a sudden, the the the the brightest star of them all, Caitlin Clark, shows up and the disrespect just does not stop from any of these players, from the damn coaches.

>> Adam Silver knows exactly what he watched. And so does everybody who had a broadcast on in the middle of that team USA game against Czechia. The commissioner of the NBA, sitting somewhere he probably didn’t expect to be sweating through a group stage blowout, [music] watched the most bankable guard in women’s basketball spend long stretches parked on a bench with a towel over her knees while veterans who’d been ice cold the night earlier kept getting run out there anyway.

>> And we’re going to talk about some fans that are very close and or have decided they’ve had enough. That watching Caitlin Clark crash out on such an epic level the other night was their final straw. And I’m talking about I have saw some fans yesterday that were like, I watched her play in high school. >> [music] >> And I cannot stomach this any longer.

And they understand why she crashed out, but they don’t want to watch her crash out. And um it’s understandable. I get that. >> He knows it. The fans in the arena knew it, too, >> [music] >> because they started chanting for her before the broadcast even cut to a reaction shot. Nobody had to explain the moment to them.

 They just watched it happen in real time and reacted the way anybody watching an obvious mistake reacts, loudly and without waiting for permission. >> I was very, very glad that Team USA bounced back after that game against Italy, that very ugly, very ridiculous game. We played so bad in that game. We only beat Italy by three, and so I was really happy to see Team USA bounce back.

 They played with some spark, hit a lot more shots than we did against Italy. Just overall as a team, everybody looked much, much better than that game. So, that was a good sign, and honestly, all that we can hope for is that Team USA continues rolling because we cannot afford another misstep. Another misstep against one of the teams that we will be facing in this knockout round will send us back to the states, okay? And we’re not going back to the states without a gold medal.

 So, I do want to show you guys act- >> Here’s the part that makes this whole situation stranger than it should be. Team USA had just gutted out a 55-52 win over Italy the night before, a game where the offense looked like it was running through wet cement. Breanna Stewart went one for 11 from the field [music] that night. One made shot.

11 attempts. That’s not a cold stretch, that’s a full-blown offensive freeze against a defense that packed the paint and dared USA to prove [music] it could shoot over the top of a zone. >> I think Caitlin Clark is getting screwed over here. This is a waste of time. She should have did exactly what A’ja Wilson did.

 She should have said, “Oh, my back is hurting. I’m just going chill.” She should just be back home getting ready for the playoffs because this is a waste of time at this point. Caitlin Clark, the goat, is being relegated to garbage time minutes. Cheryl Lawson did it again. Y’all were fooled with that first game where she played 25 minutes, not even realizing the only reason she played real minutes is because she got to play the whole fourth quarter [music] in garbage time minutes.

 Chelsea Gray has been completely garbage and trash this entire tournament, and they want to keep putting Caitlin Clark on the bench. I’m sick of it. This is disgusting. Caitlin Clark’s being relegated to a goddamn bench garbage time player. Welcome to Keep the Vision. >> And the guard sitting behind five veterans on the depth chart the very next night, the one averaging more assists per game across this tournament than any other American, was Caitlin Clark.

Think about that for a second. The team just spent 40 minutes struggling to generate a clean look, and the response wasn’t to hand more possessions to the player built specifically to solve exactly that problem. It was to run the same names back out there [music] and hope the shots start falling on their own.

>> Stew and Fee are are two of the best players in the world, and um so it’s not my job to convince them that they’re good. It’s to remind them, >> [music] >> you know, of who they are and and what they bring to the team. And um they they both bring so much to our team. They’re both complete players, and uh there’s no doubt uh when they’re playing at a really high level, um our team uh clicks.

>> [music] >> And and so it was it was great to see them both come out with uh great aggression, with great confidence, you know, confident in in who they are and in what we were doing. And um that’s that’s what I want want want to see from them every every night in terms of their confidence and their aggression.

 Um and, you know, they’re they’re capable of doing that. And I thought um that aggression gave the rest of the team confidence. And >> Cheryl Lawson had an answer ready when reporters asked why the rotation looked the way it did. She talked about trusting Stewart and Napheesa Collier to set the tone, saying it wasn’t her job to convince two of the best players alive that they’re good, just to remind them of it.

Fine, reasonable coaching philosophy on paper. Veteran leadership matters, and nobody’s arguing Stewart or Collier don’t belong on this roster. But reminding your two best veterans they’re great is a strange plan to lean on the same week one of them just shot 9% from the floor, while the guard who runs the fastest, most efficient version of American basketball on either side of the Atlantic waits on a bench with a towel over her knees.

You can respect a coach’s philosophy and still point out that the philosophy isn’t matching what’s actually happening on the scoreboard. >> [music] >> Italy came out with spark, with fire, with passion. They attacked them the entirety of the game. Did they play perfectly? No, they played far from perfect.

 Italy had 18 turnovers on the night. They had 12 in the first half, and USA only wins by three. You mean to tell me a team turns the ball over 18 times in a game and you win by three. Italy shoots 37% from the field. 37% and USA only wins by three. Italy shoots 13% from three. They made two threes on the night and USA wins by three.

 They’re not able to capitalize on them shooting so poorly from the field and from the three-point line and 70% from the free throw line. On top of that, Italy had 22 team fouls to USA’s 14. USA shot 10 more free throws than Italy did. Both teams shot 70% from the free throw line. And you mean to tell me, with all of that, with all that I just listed, it’s hard for me to be proud of this as a USA fan, because even if I’m looking at this game objectively, the refs are on our side.

>> So Czechia rolls around and USA needs a bounce back game after that ugly offensive showing against Italy. Stewart comes out firing, drills an early three off a Collier feed, and by halftime, the US is sitting on 57 points, more than the entire Italy [music] output the night before. Good for them, genuinely.

 But watch who’s still glued to the bench through most of that opening half while the vets get their redemption run. Clark doesn’t check in for real stretches, sitting through media timeouts, sitting through Czechia mini runs, sitting while the exact skill set that broke China wide open weeks earlier goes completely unused against the defense that, by the way, still finished the night giving up over 100 points.

If Czechia’s defense was that poorest once the second unit got rolling, imagine what it would have looked like against a guard who shoots off the catch from 26 feet and forces a help defender out of the paint on every single possession. >> So, look, this is one of the reasons why the WNBA has never gotten the respect that it deserves, and it never will because of stuff like this.

 It’s no reason Chelsea Gray should be playing either the same amount of minutes, more minutes, or starting over Caitlin Clark. Throughout these three games, she averages 3.7 points, zero rebounds, and as the point guard >> [groaning] >> as they call or say she is, she averages one assist. Caitlin Clark is being iced out for this, y’all.

 This is This is one of the reasons. This is the main reason Caitlin Clark is being iced out for five points, four points, two points. Now, mind you, she’s supposed to be a better the guard than Caitlin. Mind you, Caitlin Clark is like third in assists for the whole FIBA tournament that’s going on right now. While being iced out. Look, look, Chelsea Gray.

She got two two assists in this game. This game right here, big fat zero. >> And that’s when the chance start. You can hear it building on the broadcast. Low at first. Then loud enough that the commentators have to acknowledge it on air. Fans didn’t fly to Germany or tune in from their living rooms to watch veterans who just gone cold the night before get bailed out by hero ball minutes while the most efficient facilitator on the entire roster sits folded up with a towel over her knees.

They came to see Clark play. And for a stretch of that first half >> [music] >> they didn’t get to. There’s something almost funny about a national team program spending years trying to grow the audience for this sport internationally only to have the audience it just grew start booing the rotation decisions on live television.

>> Caitlin Clark, when you look at things, if you were watching the game, it felt like she was on the bench the entire time. And then at the end of the game, you look up, Caitlin Clark has played 21 minutes and she played more than anybody else in the game. But the fact of the matter is when it was real action time, Caitlin Clark is not involved.

 She’s getting froze out, she’s getting iced out. You got people refusing to pass her the ball. Uh is it it’s a complete clown show and the only reason she played 21 minutes is because uh that she played like damn near the whole fourth quarter cuz it were they were up 40. That’s the only reason she played.

 Up until then, Chelsea Gray was playing way more than her. Way more than her. And it’s ridiculous. And Chelsea Gray has been completely garbage in her minutes. Chelsea Gray played 16 minutes. She had two points, one of five. She had one assist. Chelsea Gray was horrible. She’s been horrible. Why do we keep running around with this facade, this fake point god facade? The girl’s throwing no-look passes to nowhere, to nobody.

>> Here’s where this stops being just a basketball story and starts being a business [music] story. Which is exactly the kind of thing that gets a commissioner’s attention. Reports floating around after the game described league executives watching from private suites getting visibly frustrated during that stretch, treating a dip in real-time viewership as more than just a blip.

>> [music] >> Whether or not Silver himself was in that room. The numbers don’t lie about what happens to engagement the moment Clark sits and what happens the moment she checks back in. That swing is the entire business model of this tournament broadcast in miniature and it’s not subtle. Sponsors don’t sign on because a roster is deep.

 They sign on because a specific player moves a needle nobody else on the floor can move the same way. And every minute that player spends on the bench is a minute of that deal quietly losing value. How does a program with this much money riding on one player’s popularity keep finding ways [music] to make that player disappear from the broadcast for entire quarters at a time? Social media doesn’t wait for a press conference to reach a verdict.

 It reached one before Lawson even got to the podium and the verdict wasn’t kind to the rotation chart. >> I think that ultimately the issues around Caitlin Clark are not largely about officiating and that particular incident is not about whether a foul should have been called at the time in the game or whether that was ultimately a flagrant on review.

 And I I’ve come to know Caitlin really well. She’s an incredible player and also an incredible person >> [music] >> and she wants to focus on being the best player she can and she’s become a a of a political football in this country and I think it’s incredibly unfair to her. I don’t think that issue is ultimately about officiating.

 It’s sort of, you know, it’s become political ping pong with her and she’s a young woman who’s trying to improve her game. >> Silver has talked about Clark before and not in some vague obligatory way either. >> [music] >> Back in the summer, standing on a stage at a business summit in New York, he called her an incredible player and also an incredible person.

And said she’d unfairly become what he described as a political football in this country. His exact words were that it’s become political ping pong with her and that a young woman just trying to get better at her job shouldn’t have to carry all of that extra weight. A commissioner doesn’t use language like that about a player he’s indifferent to.

>> [music] >> He uses it about someone he’s watched get put in unfair spots over and over and this benching pattern in Germany fits that description as well as anything. It’s one thing to get caught in a debate about physical play or officiating. It’s another thing entirely to get benched by your own national team while the crowd that came to watch you plays audience for the argument.

>> Starting point guard conversation is over. Through three World Cup games, Caitlin Clark has 24 points and 18 assists. Chelsea Gray has 11 points and three assists. In three games, which are in three games, Chelsea Gray has 11 points and three assists. Man, knock it off, man. Clark has double the points, six times the assists, yet Chelsea Gray is starting and Clark isn’t even having isn’t even having some incredible scoring tournament.

 She’s simply producing more. 18 assists to three. At what point does production outweigh seniority? Clark should be Team USA starting point guard, period. And I agree wholeheartedly. [music] I agree wholeheartedly. >> Because the numbers, when she actually gets on the floor, keep making the benching look worse, not better.

Against Czechia, Clark logged just under 22 minutes off the bench and put up nine points and seven assists. And the US outscored Czechia by 22 points during her minutes, the second best plus-minus of anybody in that game. Second best. Behind a rotation full of former MVPs and Olympic gold medalists, a guard getting a fraction of the run posted a plus-minus that good.

That’s not a small sample size fluke. That’s a pattern that’s been showing up all tournament and it keeps getting treated like a footnote instead of the headline. Coaches love talking about efficiency and winning plays until the player putting up the best winning numbers on the roster isn’t one of the names they already decided to build the rotation around.

>> Caitlin Clark leads Team USA with 19 assists. [music] Has a plus-minus of 58. Leads the team in that category. Let’s look at Caitlin [music] Clark’s numbers compared to a Kalya Copper, a starter [music] that won’t even clap for Caitlin Clark. Let’s look at Chelsea Gray’s numbers, >> [music] >> the point gods.

So, how Caitlin Clark leads the team in assists with 19, Kalya Copper, [music] Mrs. I won’t clap for Caitlin Clark in 56 minutes, 56 minutes of basketball with starters, veterans. [music] She’s three for 14 shooting 20%. One assist. [music] Then you go to Chelsea Gray. The veterans are so clutch and save this young team.

>> [music] >> Chelsea Gray in three games of basketball, in 50 minutes of basketball, is shooting four for [music] 13. Has three assists. That’s your starting point guard. But they don’t want to bring that up like they didn’t want to bring up that Breanna Stewart [music] was one for nine, forcing her to get the MVP in game two.

 And the reason why they barely won that game, they [music] changed the entire game plan to make sure that Caitlin Clark didn’t get the MVP. >> And this isn’t the first time this exact script has played out, either. Weeks earlier, in the tournament opener against China, Clark didn’t start at all. Sat through 6 minutes and 25 seconds of first quarter warm-ups on the bench, then checked in and put up a double-double anyway.

 [music] 14 points and 11 assists, the only American to record one that night. It happened once. People called it fact-finding. [music] It happened again in Puerto Rico back in the spring, where she started only one game out of five, and still walked away tournament MVP. Averaging over 11 points and a tournament-best 6.

4 assists a night while shooting better than 50% from the field across five games. Now it’s happening a third time in a completely different tournament, on a completely different continent, and the excuse keeps changing while the outcome stays exactly the same. You can only call something an experiment for so long before it just becomes a decision.

>> And the players, I don’t see camaraderie. I just feel like there’s a division, young versus old, you know? The old guard versus the young guns. And you get I obviously see that the younger players really kind of have some chemistry. And the old players are just there to be there, you know? They’re just They’re You know what’s kind of wild? How come nobody’s questioning Stephanie White during this whole process? Well, I will.

Stephanie White is part of the office, and you can see how bad offense was that second game. That was a Stephanie White win. You could tell. Um and you know what’s also weird? How come by no one questions Stephanie White on the treatment of Caitlin Clark? How they’re yanking her out, taking her out, and putting her weird situations.

 Oh, but then you know what they tried to do? They put her in situations where she can’t be a big impact. But then they can say, “Look, we gave her 19 minutes. We gave her some a lot of time.” Like dude, they put her at the end of the game where the game is already done. Like, what are they doing, man? >> What’s actually uncomfortable to watch if you slow the tape down isn’t just the benching.

It’s what happens on the floor once she’s actually out there. Watch the possessions where Clark gets open above the arc, hands ready, defenders still scrambling to recover, and the ball just doesn’t come [music] her way. It goes to a post up instead, or a mid-range vet ISO, or a kickout to somebody standing 3 ft closer to the defender than Clark was.

 Nobody on that roster is going to stand up at a podium and say they don’t want to pass her the ball. That’s not a thing a professional says out loud in front of cameras. But you don’t need a quote for that. You just need eyes, and a rewind button, and about 10 minutes of patience watching how the ball actually moves once it lands in a veteran’s hands with Clark standing open on the weak side.

>> It’s passes you got to make. But they saw Caitlin Clark get assists, get player of the game, so Yukon and Team USA wouldn’t pass to Caitlin. She was in the game for 19 minutes, and we’re going to go through this entire game looking at Caitlin Clark streaming up the sideline. Like, Paige ain’t going to pass it to her.

Breanna Stewart’s going to run the point guard when Caitlin Clark’s on the court. She just cannot play with this team because they’re jealous that she had 11 assists, one away from the record. So, guess what? She’s on the court with a whole bunch of players that won’t pass her the ball. They’d rather get a turnover.

But guess what? She spends the entire game passing to them, but once it leaves her hands, she’s not getting it back. They would rather have turnovers than pass to Caitlin Clark. >> Angel Reese has talked about the space Clark’s shooting gravity opens up for everybody else, crediting the easier post touches that come from a defender being pulled 30 ft from the rim just to stay attached to her.

That’s a teammate publicly admitting the value on record without being asked to defend anybody. So it’s not that the roster doesn’t know what she does for the operation. It’s that a chunk of the veteran group still hasn’t fully bought into using it the way the numbers say they should. Stewart called the younger group who stepped up against Czechia the young and turnt crew and said the team needs everybody to play hard no matter their minutes.

True enough and a fair thing to say about a group of role players stepping up in a blowout. But that quote lands differently when you remember whose minutes got cut short in the first place and whose production kept out pacing the players getting the benefit of the doubt. >> They put her in situations where she can’t be a big impact.

But then they can say, “Look, we gave her 19 minutes. We gave her some a lot of time.” Like dude, they put her at the end of the game where the game’s already done. Like what are they doing, man? This is like And then here’s another shocker, too. Nike, you know, aren’t you trying to push them shoes, right? You’re trying to advertise them.

 Shouldn’t you make a phone call to Sue Bird and like saying, “What the [ __ ] is going on? Why you ain’t got my biggest uh superstar which is she probably is, she’s the biggest superstar since LeBron James on this brand. Why ain’t you not starting her, bro? Why aren’t you starting her? I’m surprised the sponsors ain’t calling like, what the [ __ ] is going on? Because honestly, Nike got that type of power.

So, I’m kind of surprised no one’s has that no one Are they just not picking up the phone? Is doing what they want to do? >> Here’s the thing that makes this bigger than one box score. Team USA is undefeated, group play is done, and they’re moving on to a quarterfinal against the winner of Hungary and Japan. Winning covers up a lot of coaching decisions that would get picked apart in a closer tournament.

 Nobody was demanding accountability from Lawson while the scoreboard read 105-64. Blowouts have a way of doing that, smoothing over questions that would sound a lot louder in a two-point game with 4 minutes left. >> [music] >> But blowout wins have a way of hiding exactly the kind of pattern that becomes a real problem the moment the games tighten up in the knockout rounds, when possessions matter and a stalled offense against a packed zone isn’t something you can just outlast with fresh veteran legs and a deep [music] bench.

>> Great to be one of the veterans on this team because there’s so much youth and you saw them take the stage for the first time. How did you think they handled just the pressure and the excitement? >> Yeah, I think the the young and talented crew, they did really well. Um, they they just kind of took what they wanted.

 Um, they were the aggressors, they were confident, and they came in when their number was called, and that’s what this team needs. It’s like, you know, no matter what your minutes are going to be, go out and you like play hard. There is no Nobody’s going to do it for you. Like, we have to do it. >> And that’s really the whole story sitting underneath this entire controversy.

It’s not that Team USA is losing. It’s not that Clark is playing badly when she’s out there because the numbers say the exact opposite every single time she checks in. It’s that the program keeps treating its most productive guard like an insurance policy instead of a starter, bringing her across an ocean to represent the country, and then finding new reasons every single game to keep her on the bench a little longer than the stat sheet can justify.

Fans noticed it in Berlin against China. They noticed it again against Czechia. And they’re not going to stop noticing it just because the final score >> [music] >> says the US won by 40. >> So, Caitlin Clark wasn’t worth a game day graphic for Team USA, huh? First game we want to use lame ass Chelsea Gray as a game day graphic to promote women’s basketball, huh? Because we want to watch Chelsea Gray hoop, right? And then Clark gets player of the game, right? And then next day, guess who they choose? The sissoring god, Paige

Bueckers. Why would you not put Clark as a game day graphic after she won player of the game the game before? Just disrespectful. And then the most disrespectful one, today, they put the [ __ ] brick laying sloth, the girl that can’t make layups as the game day graphic for Team USA. See, Clark, this is why I say you need to stop [ __ ] with these people.

 One of the things that bothers me with you is you’re too nice. You’re too nice with these people when they just keep not giving you the proper respect. How is the generational talent that changed this [ __ ] [ __ ] forever, the reason we all even tuning into this [ __ ] does not get a game day graphic? >> [laughter] >> Especially when she got player of the game.

 Like, what the [ __ ] are we doing, man? >> None of this needed to happen this way. Team USA had a healthy lead for most of that Czechia game and plenty of room to give Clark extended run without risking the outcome. This wasn’t a tight fourth quarter where a coach has to live with the lineup that’s already on the floor. There was time. There was margin.

And there was a crowd actively asking for the change. The staff had every opportunity to make the easy call and simply chose not to. Which is exactly the kind of decision that turns a quiet rotation debate into a story a commissioner ends up getting asked about. >> [music] >> So, here’s the actual question nobody in that building wants to answer out loud.

If the offense stalls again in the quarterfinal, if Chek Iya’s zone problem shows up wearing a different jersey against Hungary or Japan, does Clark get real minutes from the opening whistle? Or does she sit through another warm-up stretch with a towel over her knees while the crowd does the arguing the coaching staff won’t? Adam Silver clearly sees where this goes if it keeps happening, and he’s already put his name behind Clark publicly more than once this year.

The fans in that arena already told him with their chanting. The only group that hasn’t said anything yet is the one standing on the sideline making the actual decisions, and at some point silence stops being neutral and starts being the answer itself.