Dallas Wings star guard Arike Ogunbowale revealed this week she took herself out of the USA Basketball pool for the 2024 Paris Olympics. Ogunbowale said that she believed the selection committee did not want her on the team. Her remarks came while appearing on the show “Nightcap” with Shannon Sharpe, Gilbert Arenas and Chad “OchoCinco” Johnson.
“When it comes to [the Olympic trials], it really doesn’t have much to do with your game,” Ogunbowale said. “It’s really about who they feel like fits with the team. So I actually took my name out the pool months ago. That’s not saying I didn’t think maybe last year, I would be on the team and I was good enough to make the team, but when the list came out, I knew I would not be that one.”
She added that the criteria for choosing who makes Team USA is “subjective.”
“Everybody’s great in the WNBA, so who they choose is who they choose,” she said.
When asked by Johnson to expand on whether politics plays a role in the committee’s decision-making process, Ogunbowale affirmed that statement, and added politics has always surrounded USA Basketball, whether it was in college or the professional leagues.
“Whether that’s USA Basketball, whether that’s All-Star teams,…
