A high school basketball player got his 15 minutes of fame, but not in the manner he had ever expected. His coach taught the whole team an interesting play but said, “We can only use this once in a lifetime, so be sure you choose the right moment.” Well, that moment came in a championship game with seconds left on the clock. His team had the ball and were down by one. They had to make this shot and were being heavily defended. This young man watched his teammates pass the ball back and forth without being able to penetrate. The clock was ticking. He knew it! This was the moment his coach had talked about in practice many months earlier.
He quickly dropped to his hands and knees and began barking wildly! All defenders turned to him for just a second to see what he was doing. There, on all fours, he just barked and barked like a dog. His distraction allowed his teammate to get inside to the basket and make the final shot to win the game.
When asked after the game why he did that, he said that although he would have rather been the one making the final shot, he was willing to do whatever it took to win the game.
It’s a story that made the national sports headlines a few years back. It’s a fine example of creative risk-taking as well as teamwork, and one that I often use in my team-work classes. If you’ve read or heard about or experienced an incident of this type, please share it with others by posting it to the Eogogics blogs.