Atlanta Dream guard Rhyne Howard was named the Kia Rookie of the Month of May. Howard averaged a team-high 16.9 points in her first month of her professional career and led all rookies with 1.5 steals per game.
Howard, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2022 WNBA Draft, has taken the league by storm since her professional debut. Howard is the WNBA’s tenth-leading scorer with 16.9 points per game and the league’s highest-scoring rookie this season heading into Wednesday’s game against Minnesota. She eclipsed 100 points in only five games, and reached 135 after the May 29 game against Phoenix, the sixth-most of any rookie in league history in that time span and the most of any Dream rookie in franchise history.
Howard is the Dream’s first WNBA Player of the Month since Brittney Sykes won in July and August of 2017.
The honor comes shortly after Howard was named the WNBA Eastern Conference Player of the Week on May 16, making her the first rookie in league history to win the award in the first week of their WNBA career since Tamika Catchings in 2002, and the first Dream rookie to ever earn a WNBA Player of the Week award. In her debut week, Howard averaged 20.8 points, 4.5 rebounds and 2.3 assists. She started in all four games and led the Dream in scoring in each of the team’s three wins.
She tied the record for the third-most points scored in a game by a Dream rookie with 33 points in a win over the Indiana Fever on May 15. Her 17 points in the first quarter of that game tied the third-most scored in a quarter by a first-year player in the WNBA, and the most ever scored by a rookie in a first quarter of any WNBA game.
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