Angel Reese gets one vote over Caitlin Clark for WNBA Rookie of the Year…
The WNBA named Caitlin Clark the league’s Rookie of the Year for 2024, but it wasn’t a unanimous decision.
Despite the fact that Clark broke the WNBA’s single-season assist record, rookie scoring record and became the first rookie in history to record a triple-double, only 66 of the 67 voters chose her to win the award. The other voter chose Chicago Sky rookie and Clark’s longtime rival Angel Reese.
Reese was a dark horse contender for the award behind Clark for the first few months of the season. However, her rookie campaign was cut short after having season-ending surgery for her wrist after suffering an injury on Sept. 6.
Clark widened her lead in nearly every statistical category in the weeks prior to and after Reese’s season ended. On top of that, she led the Indiana Fever to the playoffs for the first time in eight years as the team’s leading scorer.
Reese was only the third-leading scorer on a Chicago Sky team that finished the season with a 13-27 record, the third-worst in the league, and missed the playoffs for the first time since 2018.
The one statistic where Reese held an edge over Clark was in terms of rebounds, with more than twice as many rebounds per game at 13.1, compared to Clark’s 5.7. Reese has a natural height advantage at 6-foot-3, compared to Clark at 6-foot-0.
But Clark held advantages in terms of points with 19.2 to Reese’s 13.6 per game, assists with 8.4 to Reese’s 1.9 and even blocks with 0.7 to Reese’s 0.5, despite the height disadvantage.
Like Clark, Reese also broke a landmark WNBA single-season record during her rookie year, breaking the single-season record for rebounds during a game against the Minnesota Lynx on Sept. 2 with 418 on the year. But unlike Clark, Reese did not hold that record by the end of the season. After Reese’s season-ending surgery, MVP A’ja Wilson broke Reese’s record in the final week of the season, when Wilson recorded her 419th rebound.
However, despite the statistical discrepancies between Clark and Reese, the Sky rookie had her passionate supporters this year who argued her case over Clark.