Hanging on the wall of the Spurs’ changing room, tucked between Pau Gasol’s locker and a fridge packed with waters and isotonic beverages, is a framed poster of the Stonecutter’s Creedo, white letters over a black background that champion the virtues of perseverance in the face of apparent futility.
“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 last
blow that did it, but all that had gone before.