It is impossible to put Diana Taurasi’s career in context, especially since it is still an unfinished sentence.

She managed to insert an exclamation point anyway. During the Mercury’s 91-79 victory at Washington, the long-time Phoenix superstar surpassed 7,000 WNBA career points.

The elite group she joins in doing so would not fill a mid-sized sedan; Taurasi is just the third player in WNBA history to reach the 7,000-point mark, which Tina Thompson and Tamika Catchings also accomplished in their respective careers.

Already considered one of the greatest players in the game’s history, Taurasi was nonetheless humbled under the weight of her latest career accomplishment.

“When you’re a little a kid and you see all these great players — Cheryl [Miller], Tina [Thompson], Lisa [Leslie], [Sheryl] Swoopes, [Cynthia] Coop[er] — to be in that class, it just means a lot of work,” Taurasi said.

It is the amount of work within this particular time frame that is most impressive. With 348 total league games under her belt, the former No.1  overall pick became the fastest player in league history to reach that landmark, well ahead of Thompson (460) and Catchings (428).

Her relentless style of play made such a feat possible. Taurasi is a WNBA-bets five-time Peak Performer as the league’s leading scorer, including four consecutive honors from 2008 through 2011. She is also the only player in league history to score more than 800 points in a season more than once (2006 and 2008).

Does any single basket stand out amid the sea of 7,000 points?

“There’s a couple that do, but throughout a career there are so many good ones in games that you don’t think are important,” Taurasi reflected. “They give you that confidence to keep going.”

As individually focused as this latest milestone is, Taurasi was quick to give credit to her teammates and the only WNBA franchise for which she has played. With them,

“I’ve been lucky enough to be on a great team, a great organization for my whole career,” she said. “Not a lot of professional athletes get to do that, so I’ve been really lucky in that regard.”

Luck, however, does not account entirely for this particular achievement, just as it didn’t in her being named to the WNBA Top 20@20 earlier this week. The list honored the greatest and most influential players in the league’s history, a distinction earned through multiple means.

“The 20 women honored today are an extraordinarily accomplished group both on and off the basketball court,” said WNBA President Lisa Borders when the list was announced.. “On the court, they represent the absolute best in women’s professional basketball and are in so many ways larger than life. Off the court, they represent their teams, hometowns and communities in which they live and work with the utmost professionalism. And most importantly, they represent the hopes and dreams of generations of young girls all over the world — the future of the WNBA.”