➺ May 26, 2026

In 1706, semi-rich collectors happily paid 155 guilders for paintings by Willem Kalf — half-peeled lemons, gilded nautili — knowing Amsterdam's still life market had become a tournament of quality. Kalf was, as anyone could see, the special-est of the still-life specialists. But there were also landscape specialists, sea-battle specialists, and floral specialists competing in a system so transparent that tens of thousands of Dutch merchants and nobles bought 1.4M original paintings in less than two decades. Then the tournament of quality ended.

A new study of 20K+ modern European paintings suggests the reason art sales have slowed is that the price of paintings is no longer correlated to content or quality. AI and machine learning experts at the University of Warsaw could not come up with any model capable of consistently predicting prices. In other words, the painted lemon market has been replaced with what economists call a “market for lemons” (used car buyers can't tell duds from good cars so they’ll only pay average prices, which incentivizes anyone selling a good car to do so privately). This is why gallery-hopping middle market art buyers are so discouraged; new lemons lack the zest of the old.

The best way to prepare a child for corporate America is to read them The House at Pooh Corner before bed. Every character is someone they'll meet at an offsite or at an uncomfortable holiday party. There's the credentialed illiterate who demands to be consulted (Owl). There's the officious middle manager who needs to sync up daily with all eleven of his friends and relations (Rabbit). There's the still-bouncy new exec mounting a bound-to-fail expotition (Tigger). There's the tenured pessimist who will, to his dismay, survive the reorg (Eeyore). There's even the gender-ambiguous individual contributor one anxiety attack from getting PIP’ed (Piglet).

And at the center there's the befuddled but voracious node (Pooh) and the absentee shareholder (Christopher Robin), who appears quarterly to nod through competitive analyses of Heffalumps and Woozles. He knows the only real threat to the org is that its members grow up. His bet is they won't.

Since the 6'2" floor general of the NBA Finals-bound Knicks, became the face of the franchise, an adjective has fluttered around Madison Square Garden like a pigeon in a cathedral. Gritty. After the NBA Cup win in December: “Jalen Brunson, Knicks Show Off Grit.” After a playoff win earlier this month: “"The Legend of Jalen Brunson Grows With Gritty Game 2.” At this point, readers could be forgiven for thinking Brunson was an exfoliant, not a point guard.

Grit comes from the Old English grēot, meaning sand, dust, gravel, or bad porridge – but in New American it describes a sort of hard-nosed, working class ethos – a refusal to quit. Twain's rivermen had it; Wayne won an Oscar for it. Still — it’s a weird word for a five-star-recruit raised in a leafy (1% Black) Chicago suburb by a nine-year NBA veteran.

Weird, but predictable.

In 1986, Pistons center Bill Laimbeer told Sports Illustrated he was "probably the only guy in the league making less than his father.” Dad was a senior executive at packaging giant Owens-Illinois. Son was famously fond of throwing elbows. A few years later, a title alchemized Laimbeer’s dirtiness into grit. The rich kid became a gritty player. Most do.

That transformation — Laimbeerification, if you will — sits downstream of selection effects. Freakish talents like Allen Iverson, Shawn Kemp, and Magic Johnson reach the NBA regardless of origin. Hard-working grinders reach it only with the help of private coaches, the AAU circuit, and camps. It’s no surprise, then, that the league's most blue-collar players come from white-collar backgrounds. Players without Iverson's handle or Kemp's hops make it on hard work – and access.

Data bears this out. Since 1990, only a third of second-generation players have outperformed the average player at their draft slot. That’s because pedigree is overrated. But, by year five, second-gen players are 16% more likely to still be in the league. Grit is rated correctly. This is the Overdog Paradox. The preconceived notions about privileged players – soft, entitled – are the opposite of the truth precisely because most of those players don’t inherit the privilege of natural genius. (The fact GMs seems to understand this speaks to their own backgrounds breaking the curve on prep school AP Math quizzes.)


The all-time All-Grit team is loaded with rich kids. Kobe Bryant, son of NBA journeyman Joe "Jellybean" Bryant, drained free throws on a ruptured Achilles. Klay Thompson, son of No. 1 overall pick Mychal Thompson, came back from a torn ACL and a torn Achilles in consecutive years. Grant Hill — NFL-star father, consultant mother — played until 40. David Robinson, a Navy officer’s son, returned from a back injury to win two titles. Chris Dudley, an ambassador's undiplomatic Yalie grandson, lasted 16 years despite not knowing how to shoot.

Those careers may be at odds with the default rags-to-Rich Paul 30-for-30 narrative, but the NBA's hardscrabble image is at odds with a mostly middle-class reality. In 2012, sociologists Joshua Dubrow and jimi adams found that two-thirds of Black NBA players and over 90% of white ones came from two-parent, middle-class (at least) homes. LeBron and Westbrook are the exceptions, not the rule.

Most NBA players aren’t great. They’re just really, really, really good. And gritty.

Grit is really two traits in one person: a willingness to work hard and a willingness to wait. Both are reinforced by rewards. As Robert Eisenberger’s work on “learned industriousness” demonstrated in the 1992, people who've found that effort pays off work harder and more consistently. As Celeste Kidd's "rational snacking" study demonstrated in 1993, kids in unreliable settings grab the first marshmallow, because where they're from, waiting gets punished while kids in reliable settings hold out for the second, because waiting they have reason to believe patience is reward (it has been before). Privileged children expect their efforts to pay off. Less privileged children don’t. Traits live downstream from rational behavior. Grit, the purported dividend of deprivation, is actually cultivated most effectively by the well-to-do.

Unfortunately, unfairness breeds unfairness and there is no makegood on poverty. Laimbeer wasn't tough because he grew up on the mean cul-de-sacs of Palos Verdes Estates; he was tough because he expected to meet with success if he stuck to the plan — which, in his case, meant Bird hunting.

Historically, the San Antonio Spurs, the model franchise for a quarter century, have been the smartest about this. Legendary Gregg Popovich wanted his players "pounding the rock," a line borrowed from the Gilded Age muckraker Jacob Riis’s description of tenement poverty. The Spurs have the overdog’s belief hard work will always bring success precisely because it has. That belief has certainly not been dampened by the presence of a 7’4” center who happens to be the third-generation product of a basketball-playing mother, a track-star father, and grandparents who played in the French first division. The Spurs engage in self-Laimbeerification – the stuff of suburban soccer travel teams.

Will the Spur’s privileged grittiness be enough to overcome the Thunder and then the privileged grittiness of Jalen Brunson? That’s the rub. They have to play the game. No one knows who will win. But plenty of us know how they got there.