The 2024 Olympic Games in Paris are already being planned and many are already looking forward to the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
This is also true at ESPN, where senior WNBA writer Michael Voepel commemorated the U.S. women’s national team’s gold medal victory over France on Sunday by immediately speculating about which players would make the U.S. national team roster four years from now.
But despite being on Voepel’s list, Angel Reese was not a fan of the drill. Speaking to X, the Chicago Sky’s star rookie forward expressed her belief that the focus should remain on what the 2024 team just accomplished in bringing Team USA its eighth consecutive Olympic gold medal.
“Let’s just congratulate these women and let them enjoy this moment!” Reese wrote. “Let me out of this until my time comes!”
Let’s just congratulate these women and let them enjoy this moment! Let me out of this until my time comes! 😇 https://t.co/tMK1jr9tdZ
– Angel Reese (@Reese10Angel) 11 August 2024
Reese’s heart is clearly in the right place. But fair or not, that’s just not how sports media works.
With the Olympics over, one of the most obvious questions is, “Who will be on Team USA in four years?” It’s the same reason offseason content is so successful in the NFL, NBA, MLB, etc.—people like to look ahead.
Would ESPN have shown more decency and waited at least an hour after the gold medal win before publishing its article? Maybe. But if not, ESPN would likely have been overtaken by another network that did the same story.
The larger context to all of this, of course, is that even before Sunday’s gold medal game, there was a lot of speculation about the U.S. team’s roster for the 2028 Olympics. Caitlin Clark’s exclusion from this year’s roster became a major topic, leaving many wondering whether she and Reese would be representing the United States in four years.
Given the immediate success Clark and Reese achieved in their respective rookie seasons in the WNBA, it seems a foregone conclusion that both will play for Team USA in Los Angeles in 2028. But it’s also understandable why Reese would want to distance herself from such talk — even though her post likely only drew more attention to the story than it would have otherwise received.
(Angel Reese about X)
