Tina Charles, WNBA’s career rebound and field goal leader, retires after 14 seasons

Tina Charles, WNBA’s career rebound and field goal leader, retires after 14 seasons

In late March, Tina Charles traveled to China to play in a best-of-five series with Henan Phoenix, a Chinese women’s basketball club looking to move into its league’s top tier. Through four games, Charles, 37, averaged 22 points and eight boards while playing 29 minutes a game. Henan won, and Charles celebrated with teammates before boarding a flight back to New York.

Through the festivities, merriment and jet lag, Charles also felt something different — a true sense of clarity.

She had gone into that decisive Game 4 knowing it could be her last basketball game she played. She put on and took off her uniform that day understanding it could be the final time she ever did that. Ultimately, it was.

After a storied career that included 14 seasons in the WNBA, two national championships at UConn, three Olympic gold medals and hundreds of games overseas, Charles’ final points came in a small gymnasium in central China.

Charles told The Athletic she has retired from professional basketball and is at peace with moving away from the hardwood.

“I’m very thankful for the career that I’ve been able to have, the experiences I was able to have,” Charles said. “I gave everything to this game, and the game gave me everything that I needed to become who I am. So now, it’s just time to apply that same standard of what I held myself to on the court to what’s next.”

Charles is considered one of the WNBA’s silent megastars, the most talented player who never won a WNBA title. She leaves as one of the preeminent — and one of the last — back-to-the-basket posts who also revolutionized her own game, expanding her range to the 3-point line after attempting just 17 3s through the first six seasons of her career.

She retires atop the WNBA leaderboard in career rebounds (4,262) and field goals made (3,364), and second in points scored (8,396). Charles, an eight-time All-Star who’s undoubtedly headed to the Hall of Fame someday, led the league in scoring twice during her career and was named the 2012 MVP. She was most recently a first-team all-league player in 2017. She was still considered a free-agent option during this offseason cycle, though the likelihood of being an immediate impact player has diminished.

Charles was the No. 1 pick in the 2010 WNBA Draft, after leading UConn to NCAA Tournament titles in 2009 and 2010 to cap undefeated seasons. In 2010, as a rookie with the Connecticut Sun, she led them in points and rebounds. She spent four seasons there before moving to the New York Liberty, her hometown team, in 2014. In 2020, New York traded Charles to the Washington Mystics, and she then journeyed to four teams during five seasons, culminating with a return to the Sun last season.

It was a new role for her, and ultimately, a clarifying season. As she did as a rookie with the Sun, she led Connecticut in scoring last season. But in 2025, her position and the space she occupied had changed.

“Playing around the younger players gave me perspective,” said Charles, who averaged 17.8 points and nine rebounds per game during her WNBA career. “They pushed me in a different way. It wasn’t just about competing, it was about adapting and learning and understanding where I fit in a new version of the game. It’s like they brought the energy, I brought the experience, and somewhere in that I was able to gain clarity. It’s just a full circle moment — you remember when you were in their shoes, when you were them, and you recognize when it’s their time to grow into the space you once held.”

The thoughts of retirement began to linger last season for Charles. She still opted to play in Athletes Unlimited this past offseason and travel to China for the series with Henan. Even in July, on an episode of Sue Bird’s podcast, Charles said, though with a laugh, that she thought about retirement “every day.”

“When you do the things that nobody sees, you’re going in to go work out, to strengthen your body and do all those little things — that started to escape me. I always showed up, but just the intention and why I’m doing it, it started to feel like work versus like what it used to,” Charles told The Athletic. “Once that started creeping in, that’s when I knew, like, all right, I’ll see if I want to give this a go this summer.”

But after that trip to China, Charles knew it was the right time to retire. Charles — who was born and raised in Queens and attended Christ the King Regional High School — will continue to live in New York while bouncing between home bases in Connecticut and Jamaica, where she feels a deep connection to her mother’s birthplace.

Charles is currently earning her master’s degree in sports management at UConn, and sees herself possibly working in a front office of the WNBA or NBA, or for a college team. This past semester, she worked as a graduate assistant for UConn athletics’ chief operating officer, learning about revenue share, name, image and likeness, scheduling and operations.

Charles has also founded and owns 78 Brewing Co., named for the Huskies’ 78-game win streak during her junior and senior seasons, joining the less than one percent of Black-owned American breweries. She will also continue her involvement with Hopey’s Heart Foundation, a non-profit she founded in 2013 that has placed more than 500 free automated external defibrillators (AEDs) in schools and communities.

“I’ve always had an entrepreneurship spirit. I’ve always had the mindset, and this chapter allows me to grow more into it,” Charles said. “I’ve never wanted to stay in one version of myself.”

Charles said she’s looking forward to this next stage of her career and life. After 20 years — between the WNBA, overseas play and UConn — of year-round basketball, she’s excited to reflect on her career and spend time with her family and friends.

The WNBA Charles leaves is far different from the one she joined in 2010. She earned a rookie salary of $45,827. The No. 1 pick this season, fellow UConn alum Azzi Fudd, will earn $500,000. The WNBA’s growth, represented by its groundbreaking collective bargaining agreement, has been significant as salaries, benefits, franchise valuations and television deals have skyrocketed. Though Charles ultimately won’t be a part of this next iteration of the league, she’s proud of the part she played in getting women’s basketball to this point.

“If I’ve done anything, I hope it’s that I made the path a little clearer and a little wider for the next generation,” Charles said. “Just having a tiny thing to do with that since entering the league in 2010 — making the league more exciting, expanding players’ minds to what they should be doing actively while playing off the court, and how to use the platform of the WNBA to elevate their beliefs and their dreams and their business aspirations; how to impact someone with just your kindness and just with your work. So, I think for me, that’s what legacy is.”

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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