Rhyne Howard sets WNBA 3-point record as Angel Reese notches record 30th double-double in Dream rout

The Atlanta Dream returned from a three-week hiatus for the FIBA World Cup and dismantled the Connecticut Sun 103-59 on Thursday night, a game in which two players etched their names into the WNBA record book within minutes of each other. Rhyne Howard drained a three-pointer with 6 minutes 45 seconds left in the fourth quarter to break the single-season record for three-pointers made, and forward Angel Reese collected her 30th double-double of the season, a new league mark, before the first quarter of the second half was even finished.

The result, Atlanta's largest margin of victory this season, pushed the Dream to 27-14 and tightened an already congested race for playoff seeding in the Eastern Conference with barely a week of regular-season basketball remaining. It also arrived on a night the club revealed that four-time All-Star Brionna Jones will not play again in 2026, adding an edge of uncertainty to a roster otherwise humming after a summer disrupted by international duty.

The numbers

Reese finished with 30 points on 11-of-14 shooting and 10 rebounds in just 25 minutes, according to the official box score posted by the league. She reached the milestone double-double on a free throw with 5:38 remaining, then grabbed her tenth rebound seconds later, giving her 30 double-doubles in a single season, a total no player has reached before. The mark eclipses the 29 Reese herself set earlier this month, which had itself broken the previous record of 28 held by Alyssa Thomas since the 2023 season — a small irony, given that Thomas built much of that total as a member of the very Connecticut franchise Reese victimized on Thursday before her trade to Phoenix. Howard, who entered the night one three-pointer shy of Sabrina Ionescu's mark of 128 set in 2023, needed all but one of nine attempts to miss before finally connecting late in the fourth; she finished with 10 points and the new record of 129 makes, reached in her 40th game of the season, a pace considerably faster than Ionescu's. Guard Allisha Gray also scored 10, enough to push her past her own franchise record for points in a single season, now standing at 782.

Connecticut, playing out a lost season at 10-31, was led by Olivia Nelson-Ododa's 13 points, all of them scored in the first half before Atlanta's defense closed the door, a collapse also reflected in ESPN's independent box score of the game. The Dream outscored the Sun 31-11 in the third quarter and 27-13 in the fourth, turning a competitive opening half into a rout. Atlanta's player profile for Howard now lists her among the most efficient volume shooters from beyond the arc in franchise history.

How the Dream got here

Thursday's game was the first the WNBA played in nearly three weeks, with the schedule paused so national federations could send players to the FIBA World Cup in Germany. Both Howard and Reese were part of the gold medal-winning United States roster, meaning Atlanta's two most productive players returned to club basketball on short rest and with almost no practice time as a unit. Roughly 40 percent of the Dream's roster had international commitments over the break, according to coach Karl Smesko, who has spent the past week managing conditioning and rotations rather than installing new schemes.

The timing compounded an already difficult stretch. Jones, a four-time All-Star acquired to anchor Atlanta's frontcourt, tore a meniscus overseas last winter, did not debut until mid-July, and then suffered a separate left leg injury on August 13 in a game at Mohegan Sun after sliding over to contest a shot. She appeared in only nine games all season before the club ruled her out for good, leaving Reese to carry a heavier interior workload than originally planned entering the postseason. The Dream have said Jones is expected to make a full recovery in time for next season.

Atlanta's push comes a year after a first-round playoff exit to the Indiana Fever, a series many around the team still describe as a missed opportunity given the roster's talent. With four games left on the regular-season schedule — Connecticut, Chicago, and a home-and-home with the Liberty — the Dream sit a half-game ahead of Indiana in the scramble for the conference's No. 4 seed, a spot that would grant home-court advantage in the first round for a second straight year, a position tracked on the league's current standings page.

Reaction

Howard, who has now broken a three-point record in consecutive seasons, was unequivocal in remarks she gave reporters afterward about her expectations for herself.

"I'm breaking a 3-point record every year, so I expect nothing less than that. It's what I like to do, and I'm going to keep doing it," Howard said. "There's going to be plenty more records, three-point records, with my name on it as long as I'm in the league, I believe."

Howard added that the team's focus had shifted immediately from the international break back to the stakes of September basketball: "Now, we're back into W mode. We're back into playoff mode. We're still fighting for something come playoff time, and so we're making sure that we handle our business and that we don't leave anything up to anybody else," she said, a sentiment echoed in the club's own recap of the night, which the team published on its website hours after the final buzzer.

Smesko, for his part, has tried to keep the locker room from reading too much into a lopsided win over a last-place opponent, pointing instead to the parity that has defined the league all year. He has said repeatedly this month that the gap between the conference's best and worst records is thinner than the standings suggest, and that his priority for the final stretch is health and rhythm rather than seeding gymnastics. Analysts tracking Atlanta's postseason odds have put the Dream's chances of landing the No. 4 seed at just over 50 percent, with a rematch against Indiana in the opening round considered roughly as likely, a storyline that would carry extra weight given last year's upset, a dynamic detailed in a recent report on the team's playoff push.

What happens next

The Dream host the Chicago Sky on Saturday before a home-and-home set against the Liberty in Brooklyn closes out the regular season, three games in six days that will determine whether Atlanta opens the playoffs at home or on the road. Reese, who was limited to 25 minutes Thursday as Smesko managed her workload after the World Cup layoff, is expected to see her minutes climb back toward full form over that stretch. Howard's record, meanwhile, is not likely to stand still; with three games remaining, she has a realistic chance to pad the new mark further before the postseason begins.

For Connecticut, already eliminated from playoff contention and playing for draft position, Thursday's loss was simply the latest data point in a rebuilding season under new front-office direction. For Atlanta, the larger story is whether a team reshaped by injury and interrupted by an Olympic-style summer break can find its rhythm in time to avoid a repeat of last year's early playoff exit. The next ten days of results, more than the record book, will answer that.