Women’s Basketball GOAT Discussion Is Not Complete Without the Name Tina Charles

Charles announced her retirement after one of the most accomplished pro, college, prep, and international careers in basketball history.

Tina Charles of the Atlanta Dream during a game against the Connecticut Sun in College Park, Ga., on Aug. 18, 2024. Matthew Grimes Jr./Getty Images

With the NBA and NHL playoffs in their midst, horse racing’s Triple Crown season underway, and MLB in full swing, some recent news in the WNBA world may have flown under the radar. It deserves more recognition, however, because it’s the  retirement of someone who could very well be on the Mount Rushmore of women’s basketball: Tina Charles.

On Tuesday, Charles announced that she was calling it a career after 15 professional seasons, with her final season coming last year with the Connecticut Sun. Her retirement statement read, in part, “Today, I officially announce my retirement from basketball. …  I’m at peace with this decision, aligned with what I’m being called to do next, making space for someone else to step in and grow the way I once did.”

Someone else may step in and fill Charles’s place in the WNBA, but it would be a tall order to duplicate what she’s accomplished on the court. She is on the very short list of the greatest players in the sport and has achieved just about everything one possibly can.

At the professional level, Charles leaves the game as the WNBA’s all-time leader in total rebounds, including both offensive and defensive boards, as well as field goals made. She ranks second in league history in points, trailing only Diana Taurasi, and Charles also had standout individual years in both scoring and rebounding. She owns two scoring titles and she led the W in rebounds four times in her career. The latter is the most in WNBA history, and Charles is the only player ever to win both multiple scoring titles and rebounding titles.

Doing it on both ends of the court was a staple of Charles across her six stops, with most of that time spent in locations she had ties to. A former UConn standout, Charles spent five years with the Connecticut Sun, and the Queens-born center also spent six years with the New York Liberty. As for her two-way ability, Charles was a nine-time All-WNBA selection—which is the fifth-most all-time—as well as a four-time All-Defensive Team member. The singular highlight of her W career came in 2012, when Charles was named the WNBA MVP after leading the league in both rebounds and double-doubles while finishing second in points.

Charles also had three runner-up finishes in league MVP voting as her consistency was one of the hallmarks of her career. Even in her final WNBA season, at age 36, Charles finished ninth in the league in total points and put up 16.3 points per game. For her 473-game WNBA career, Charles averaged 17.8 points, nine rebounds, and 2.2 assists.

While Charles never won a WNBA championship, she is still a champion, courtesy of what she did on the Olympic, international, and amateur levels. She won three Olympic gold medals, and three FIBA World Cup golds, for Team USA. She also competed internationally, parallel to her WNBA career, with stops in Turkey, Poland, and China. She won a total of eight titles in those countries, including the esteemed SuperCup with the Turkish club Fenerbahçe in 2024.

Her experience in college with the UConn Huskies helped set the stage for her remarkable professional career. She was on some of Geno Auriemma’s greatest teams, which is saying much considering the prestige of the UConn program. Charles won national championships in her junior and senior years with the Huskies, with both of those being undefeated seasons. She won her last 78 games in college, part of a 90-game win streak for UConn.

Also, while in Storrs, Connecticut, Charles became UConn’s all-time leading scorer, a mark which has since been broken. However, she remains the school’s all-time leading rebounder, ahead of the likes of Rebecca Lobo, Breanna Stewart, and Maya Moore, despite Charles not even ranking in the top 10 in school history in minutes played. Charles also claimed the Final Four Most Outstanding Player award (2009) and was the AP Player of the Year (2010).

Her exploits date back even beyond her college days as, unsurprisingly, she’s also one of the greatest high school players of all time. She attended the famed Christ the King in Queens, N.Y., and followed in the footsteps of two legends. Both Sue Bird and Chamique Holdsclaw attended Christ the King before Charles, and those two are in the Basketball Hall of Fame. But neither Bird nor Holdsclaw ever accomplished what Charles did as a high schooler—she was both the national Female Basketball Player of the Year and the Gatorade Female Athlete of the Year, regardless of sport.

Speaking of the Hall of Fame, that is surely where Charles will end up one day. In her retirement letter, Charles said, “This game gave me everything and I’ll miss it deeply.”

Those are two-way sentiments as she also gave everything to the game of basketball, and it will miss her as much as she’ll miss it.