Swing till the Stone Splits

“When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.” -Jacob Riis

This is one of the most iconic quotes in American Sports history and it came from a 19th-century photographer. What?

Jacob Riis never dunked a basketball or hit a fadeaway jumper. He spent his days documenting New York City's slums with a camera. His words, however, were framed next to the locker of one of the most iconic basketball players ever:

Kobe Bean Bryant.

These weren’t just words on a page to Kobe. He personified them. He was a notoriously process-driven, workaholic, borderline psychopath. So much so that just about everyone who encountered him has their own Kobe story.

In a world obsessed with overnight success, there’s a lot to be learned from swinging a hammer and trusting that the stone will one day split.