Anders Lee had already scored two goals toward the end of last night’s NY Islanders hockey game against the San Jose Sharks. With a few minutes left, the Sharks pulled their goalie to get an extra skater and Lee stole the puck with an opportunity to pop it into the empty net for the win. Lee, a stand-out player and captain of the Islanders is in his eighth season and yet has never had a three-goal game. So, what does he do? He takes the puck up the left side, sees the empty net and passes it to his teammate Josh Bailey, who scores the goal. The game ends and Anders Lee has still never scored a hat-trick. With an opportunity for a nice personal accomplishment, the team captain opts to be unselfish and pass the puck and let someone else score. Cool.
I live in the New York area, and on one of the many screens at my gym, I saw this replay on the morning sports report.
Moments later, on the same telecast, they showed highlights of a local high school basketball game and I watched a player slam dunk and jump around shouting and flexing his biceps. Look at me, I just scored two points with a slam dunk…not the game winner, not even a tying basket, just two points in the middle of a high school game….so look at me. Never mind his teammate that hauled down a rebound in traffic and fired a beautiful pass to him so he could score. No. Look at me. See me flex. It may seem kind of ridiculous in this context, but I fully understand the kid. He has been watching sports on TV his whole life.
Watch any sport. Basketball, yes. American Football has the choreographed touchdown dances that take place even when their team is losing, and the chest pounding after a catch. Baseball has players standing and flipping the bat when hitting a home run, and the styled home run trots…all too often played out when their team is still losing. I really don’t mean to pick on sports, heck I love sports, but this sort of thing has never sat well with me.
The funny thing is (and I have not scientifically proven this) that I don’t feel like the big celebrations we see are actually correlated with great results. Heck, I have watched the NY Jets players celebrate in the NFL for years and they are still, well, the Jets.
It may seem like ancient history, but when you read about the greats like NCAA Men’s Basketball coaches Dean Smith and John Wooden, you find was a day when the opposite was expected. They would expect a player scoring a basket to point to the player who passed them the ball. This was the celebration. They were onto something, I expect. Wooden is the greatest coach of all time with a run of 10 national championships in a 12 year span.
Where did this mindset go? In this era of non-stop self-promotion everywhere, and especially in sports and on social media (where some peoples’ careers depend on it), there are still some places you can find the old-school self-deprecating person. In fact, they are always in our midst.
Find a well-run business, a restaurant, store, department, or office that has happy employees and happy customers. Just ask to meet the manager. And there you have it….Old School.
Have you tried looking?