For most of my life in basketball, as a player and early in my coaching career, I never thought twice about starting lineup introductions.
Every game, the same ritual: starters’ names announced one at a time, the rest of the team lined up to high-five them as they jogged out to be recognized by the crowd.
I loved it as a player. Hearing my name called, and jogging out to that recognition. It never occurred to me to think about it any other way. That’s just how basketball games start.
It wasn’t until I was coaching that I began to see it differently.
By then, I was telling players something I deeply believed: your role matters as much as anyone else’s. It doesn’t matter who starts. The team succeeds because everyone does their job well, whatever that job is.
I believed that. I still do.
But every game, we lined up the whole team to publicly celebrate five players while everyone else cheered from the side.
For some players, that was a tough pill to swallow. They were hearing that every role was valuable, and then watching their teammates receive public recognition for their role that they weren’t getting for theirs. Whatever we said about equal value, the ritual sent a different signal: these five roles were worthy of recognition in a way the others weren’t.
I saw the contradiction. And I kept doing it anyway.
The story about the frog was never true
I recently came across a passage in Adam Grant’s Think Again that gave me language for part of what had happened.
Grant points out that the familiar boiling frog story, the one where a frog sits in slowly heating water and doesn’t notice until it’s too late, isn’t even true. A frog will jump out the moment the water gets uncomfortable. The story is a myth. And yet people have repeated it for decades without ever checking whether it was accurate.
The interesting part isn’t what the story tells us about frogs. It’s what our willingness to keep repeating it tells us about ourselves.
As Grant puts it: “It’s not the frogs who fail to reevaluate. It’s us. Once we hear the story and accept it as true, we rarely bother to question it.”
For years, that’s exactly what I’d done with starting lineup introductions. I had accepted the story, this is just how basketball games start, without ever asking whether the ritual fit what I actually believed about a team.
But eventually I did question it. And that’s where my experience departs from the frog story. I reevaluated the practice. I saw the contradiction.
I just didn’t change anything.
Reevaluating isn’t the end of the work
The moment you finally reconsider something isn’t the finish line. Sometimes it’s just the beginning.
Once I started coaching and paying closer attention to how players experienced that ritual, I saw the contradiction. I understood exactly what message the ritual was sending, regardless of what I said in the locker room.
And I didn’t do anything to change it.
Seeing the misalignment required one thing, a willingness to see things through a different lens.. Changing it would have taken a different kind: the willingness to do something that would look unusual, invite questions from players, parents, and other coaches, and depart from something everyone expects to see before a game starts.
I had the first. I didn’t have the second.
I can’t point to anyone who told me I couldn’t change it. I simply didn’t.
Seeing it is different than changing it
Reevaluating a belief happens inside your own head. Nobody has to know you’re doing it, and nobody can push back on it, because they don’t see it happening.
Acting on what you find is different. It’s public. It requires explaining a change to people who liked things the way they were, defending a decision that looks unnecessary from the outside, and accepting that some people will assume you’ve overthought something simple.
For me, the gap was courage to be different in this area. I saw the contradiction clearly and didn’t want to deal with what changing it would invite. For another leader, the same gap might be inertia, competing priorities, uncertainty about whether the disruption is worth it, or simply not feeling like it’s theirs to change. The specific reason varies. The pattern doesn’t.
Rethinking something doesn’t change an organization. Acting on what you’ve rethought does.
What do they think we believe?
There’s another reason this matters for leaders.
Organizations communicate their beliefs through more than mission statements, speeches, and values on a website. What they repeatedly do may communicate those beliefs even more clearly
We told our players every role mattered. Then, before every game, we created a ceremony around five of them.
If a player ignored everything I said and simply watched what we did, what would he reasonably conclude we believed?
That question extends well beyond basketball.
A club can say development matters more than winning. What does it celebrate?
It can say every team matters. Where do its best resources go?
It can say coaches are its most important asset. How much does it invest in developing them?
It can say parents are partners. When and how does it communicate with them?
If someone couldn’t read what your organization says it believes, and could only watch what it does, what would they conclude?
Where this leaves you
I don’t know what would have happened if I’d stopped announcing starting lineups.
Maybe players would have appreciated it. Maybe some would have hated it. Maybe parents would have wondered what I was trying to prove.
I do know this: I saw something in our program that didn’t align with what I said I believed, and I chose the familiar practice anyway.
Looking back, I’m not certain eliminating the introductions would have been the right answer, but I wish I’d been willing to find out.
Every organization has its version of the starting lineup announcement. A practice, policy, ritual, or assumption that’s been around so long it no longer feels like a decision.
Grant’s frog story is a useful reminder to question the things we’ve accepted as true.
But questioning them isn’t enough.
Once we see the gap between what we say we believe and what we actually do, we have another decision to make.
Are we willing to do something about it?
Questions for Leaders
What’s a practice in our program that’s gone unquestioned simply because it’s always been done that way?
If someone could only watch what we do and not hear what we say, what would they conclude we believe?
Where have we already seen a contradiction but haven’t yet been willing to act on it?
Written by
Nathan Holm
Strategic innovation advisory for sports leaders navigating a rapidly changing industry.