In the 2016 season, Catchings caught her 3,308th rebound in a regular season game loss to the Minnesota Lynx becoming the WNBA all-time leader in regular season rebounds also passing Lisa Leslie. Prior to becoming the WNBA all-time leading rebounder, Catchings had also become only the second player in WNBA history to have 7,000 points and 3,000 rebounds in the month of May. Catchings's final WNBA game was on September 21, 2016, in a first round playoff game loss to the Phoenix Mercury, due to the WNBA's new playoff format that had just been in effect, where the first and second rounds contains only a single elimination game instead of the traditional best-of-3 series. Also teams get seeded based on overall league standings instead of conference standings with the top two seeded teams receiving double byes to the semifinals (the last round before the WNBA finals) as well as the third and fourth seeded teams receiving byes to the second round. Catchings scored 13 points and grabbed 10 rebounds in 30 minutes of play.