Angel Reese Makes WNBA History with 500 Rebounds
Angel Reese didn’t just grab another rebound on Saturday. She grabbed a piece of WNBA history.
Midway through the first half against the Chicago Sky, the Atlanta Dream star hauled in her 500th board of the season, becoming the first player in league history to reach that mark in a single year. It’s a number that sounds like a typo until you remember who we’re talking about.
This is the same season in which Reese shattered the WNBA’s single-season rebounding record, a mark she set on Aug. 24 in Atlanta’s 78-71 win over the Los Angeles Sparks. That night, as she climbed past the old standard, she laid out the philosophy that has powered this run.
“Anything that goes up is mine,” she said then, via USA Today’s Cydney Henderson. It wasn’t bluster. It was a mission statement.
Reese has turned that mindset into a relentless routine. She hasn’t just been active on the glass; she’s owned it. Night after night, same hunger, same edge, same result: the ball keeps finding No. 5.
And the records keep falling.
On Aug. 30, the three-time All-Star set the WNBA’s single-season record for double-doubles, racking up her 29th of the year. That’s not a hot streak. That’s a season built on dominance and repetition, where production becomes expectation.
The numbers behind it are staggering. Heading into Saturday’s game, Reese was averaging a career-high 16.5 points and a league-leading 12.4 rebounds per game across 40 appearances. She’s not padding those stats in quiet minutes, either. She’s adding 2.8 assists, 1.8 steals and 0.7 blocks a night, stuffing every corner of the box score while anchoring the Dream frontcourt.
Her impact shows up in the margins as much as in the headlines. With Reese on the floor, Atlanta owns a plus-10.2 net rating this season. When she sits, that drops to plus-0.2, per WNBA.com. That’s the difference between a contender and a coin flip.
It tracks with where the Dream sit in the standings. At 27-14, Atlanta holds the No. 4 spot in the WNBA as the playoffs loom, carrying the profile of a team nobody wants to see in a five-game series. Reese is at the center of that, a 24-year-old already playing with the authority of a veteran star.
She talked back in August about wanting to be one of the best when she walks away from the game, and about the challenge of being “consistent every night.” So far, she’s backing that up with a season that keeps forcing the league record book to make room.
The question now isn’t whether Angel Reese will rewrite more lines in that book.
It’s how far this version of her can carry the Dream when the stakes rise and every rebound, every possession, starts to feel like its own history-making moment.
