Arike Ogunbowale Shows Team USA What It’s Missing

Twice in the past four years, the U.S. women’s basketball team has played an exhibition game against a group of non-Olympic WNBA All-Stars prior to the Summer Games.

Team USA had failed to stop Arike Ogunbowale at every turn.

In Team WNBA’s 2021 victory, Ogunbowale scored 26 points. On Saturday night, she poured in a WNBA All-Star Game record 34 points as the WNBA squad defeated the Olympians 117-109 in Phoenix, Arizona.

“I think it’s just a testament to, you know, my hard work,” Ogunbowale said. “Regardless of, you know, win, lose or draw, I’m going to play my game and that’s what I did for Dallas.”

Related: WNBA Games Today, WNBA Schedule

The Dallas Wings guard was especially great in the third quarter, scoring 21 points. In total, she shot 8 of 13 3-pointers and also collected three rebounds and six assists. And just like in 2021, Ogunbowale won the MVP award of the game.

All of this raises two questions: Why isn’t Ogunbowale on the U.S. team going to Paris, France? Wouldn’t she help the U.S. win their eighth consecutive gold medal?

The answer to the second question is yes, of course. The answer to the first question is a bit more complicated.

Related: Olympic events today, Paris 2024 Olympic Games schedule

In June, during an interview with former NFL players Shannon Sharpe and Chad Ochocinco, Ogunbowale revealed that she had withdrawn from the Olympics. She said, “I just felt the vibes… When it comes to stuff like that, it really doesn’t have anything to do with your game… There’s always been politics around it.”

Ogunbowale has an accolade dating back to her time at Notre Dame, where she hit a pair of buzzer beaters in the 2018 NCAA Tournament to help the Irish win a national championship. Since joining the WNBA with the fifth overall pick by the Wings in 2019, she’s made four All-Star teams and captured a scoring title. She’s third in the WNBA in scoring this season with 22.3 points per game and is just the fourth player in league history to win the All-Star Game MVP award twice, joining Swin Cash, Lisa Leslie and Maya Moore.

All three of these players have played multiple times in the Olympics for Team USA. Why Ogunbowale—arguably one of the best scorers in the WNBA right now—didn’t do so this year makes no sense. She’s 27 now and will be 31 when the 2028 Summer Games come to Los Angeles. If women’s basketball fans never get to see Ogunbowale play on an international stage, it would be a shame.

What was true Saturday night was this: Team USA couldn’t stop her, and they didn’t have a single player who could score with her basket-for-basket.

Another player who left Team USA, rookie and fellow All-Star Caitlin Clark, called Ogunbowale “the best one-on-one player” in the WNBA after her All-Star performance.

“She just has that skill. She can make any shot, any time she wants,” Clark said. “That’s how good she is with the ball. It was fun to watch. That was exciting for me.”

It was probably less fun for Team USA, as they just got outplayed by one of the best guards in the game.

More matches next season

WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said Saturday that the league plans to expand the regular season to 44 games by 2025. Currently, each WNBA team plays 40 games per regular season. 44 is the maximum allowed under the WNBA’s current collective bargaining agreement.

“We are looking at the footprint for next year,” Engelbert told reporters at a news conference before the All-Star Game. “We don’t have an international competition next year like the FIBA ​​World Cup or the Olympics, so we can look at our footprint without any interruption or pause, like we break this year.”

Engelbert added that the WNBA hopes to hold more games internationally in the future. The commissioner mentioned Europe, Asia, Mexico City and the Middle East as possibilities.

Also read: Highest Paid WNBA Players

Dream release Henderson

The Atlanta Dream released guard Destanni Henderson, making the third-year pro a free agent. Henderson, who helped South Carolina win a national championship in 2022, has played six games for the Dream this season, averaging four points, two rebounds and 2.5 assists per game. She last played on July 17, scoring five points and adding four assists against the Minnesota Lynx. In three seasons, Henderson has now spent time with four teams, playing for the Phoenix Mercury and LA Sparks last year and the Indiana Fever, who drafted her with the 20th overall pick in 2020, in 2022.