Dennis Rodman is considered the greatest rebounder the game of basketball has ever seen.

Over his career, Rodman averaged 18 rebounds a game.

But, what a lot of people don't realize is that what would become his greatest strength was actually birthed from weakness.

Rodman was undersized––especially for his position––so he obsessed over perfecting the art of the rebound.

He would often have his friends meet him at the Bull's practice gymnasium. He would ask them to shoot around as he sat and studied how the ball would bounce off the rim. With time, he learned to anticipate where the ball was going based on the shot.

Rodman would then try and snatch the ball from the air one-handed (recognizing he wasn't tall enough to get both hands on the ball). He would even wear a blind-fold, forcing himself to rely strictly on his sense of sound to locate the ball.

Rodman single-handedly made rebounding fashionable by romanticizing a difficult, gritty aspect of the game of basketball that so many overlooked. There's a lesson there, somewhere.