The end of this NBA season reminds of that “pounding the rock” mantra the San Antonio Spurs love so much. It’s a Jacob Riis passage that goes as follows: “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.”
That’s an ode to the cumulative value of consistent hard work, but the same can be said for the impact of cumulative stress. Many blows are sustained before you ultimately break. That is how this season, following a short offseason, seemed normal on the injury front until near the end. Like aging, it goes little by little, then all at once. Now, rock after rock is cracking at the worst possible time. Injuries have led some of the league’s top stars to miss time this postseason.
