How will Kara Lawson work Caitlin Clark into Team USA's rotation?
Yahoo Sports' Caroline Fenton and women's basketball writer Cassandra Negley are joined by Richard Cohen, women's basketball analyst and writer for Her Hoops Stats, who questions how Team USA head coach Kara Lawson will work Caitlin Clark into the rotation. Catch the full conversation on the "Hoops 360" podcast, and subscribe on Apple podcasts , Spotify , YouTube, or wherever you listen.
Video Transcript
Caitlin Clark is the name.
Carol Lawson, the head coach for Team USA, she called a Fever game a couple of weeks ago and was very critical of Caitlin's late game, actions.
She had a foul late in a close game.
But you bring it up in your, your players to watch here that Caitlin is the player to watch, and you make this point.
You quote, "There are flaws, and how much Carol Lawson lives with those flaws when, as always with Team USA squads, there are extremely talented alternatives available, is going to be interesting."
We all know how good she is.
This is the problem with, with the fans.
They don't wanna hear the part where you talk about the great scoring, the, the distribution, the assists she piles up on top of the scoring, the way she mangles the defense with the shooting that she produces from 35, 40 feet, which means, you know, teams have to defend them differently from how you defend any other team.
But she's not a great defensive player by any means, and as I mentioned, she's tends to be a little loose with the ball at times, that all of those assists come with a lot of turnovers.
She's broken a lot of turnover records in the WNBA along with breaking assist records.
So whether Lawson is willing to, to accept the bad with the good, if the good is good enough to, to overcome that, or whether Clark herself can change her game slightly in order to adapt to what Lawson might want more from her.
You know, play a slightly more considered game.
Don't throw quite as many dangerous passes as you might in a typical Fever game, because you don't need to.
When every player on the floor for the US can create a shot at will, you don't need to take as many risks as you might in a Fever game.
So yeah, I, I, that's why I picked her out, 'cause I think it's gonna be interesting to see how much playing time she gets, and it's not gonna matter how much playing time she gets in a group game against even China in the first game, although China might be one of the most interesting opponents in that group.
What's gonna matter is how much players play in a semifinal against Spain or France or whoever.
Once you get to that stage, has Lawson decided on some favorites?
Are there, like, three or four players who don't play at all because she's pared down her rotation?
So yeah, I, that's, that's always one of the interesting parts with Team USA is what the coach is gonna do with the squad that they're provided, because there's so much talent, and you have to figure out how they all come together.
