Ghosts in Sport: Strategy, Curses & Leadership Haunts
To borrow from the band the Police (who suggested in 1981 there was a ‘Ghost in the Machine’) we’re going to suggest there are ghosts are everywhere in sport.
They show up in playbooks, replay reviews, locker rooms, boardrooms and sometimes, in the psyche of leaders themselves. But before we acquire to the haunted executive suite, consider how literal the language of ghosts already is in sport.
Ghosting in strategy: The disappearing screen
In the National Basketball Association (NBA), a ghost screen is a weapon of deception. A player moves as if to set a pick, forcing a selected defender to anticipate contact. The pick-setter then slips away before the screen is ever set. The defender is left guarding a phantom.
Coaches and analysts describe it as a variation of the traditional pick-and-roll: instead of making contact, the screener “slips” or “ghosts” the screen, quickly relocating to open space and exploiting defensive confusion.
The move has become a staple in modern spacing offenses, particularly in the pace-and-space era where defences frequently switch ball screens.
The Golden State Warriors have long used variations of this play within their motion offense. When defenders anticipate a traditional screen involving Steph Curry and Draymond Green, the screener may instead slip or ghost the pick, triggering a defensive miscommunication briefly leaving Curry open beyond the arc.
In an NBA offense where fractions of a second can create three-point shots, momentary confusion is all that’s needed. The defence reacts to something that never actually happens.
Ghost goals and phantom calls
Sometimes the ghost isn’t intentional. It’s officiating. The National Football League (NFL) and NBA have both had recent “ghost” moments – plays that seemed real in the moment but evaporated under review, or calls that lingered long after the whistle.
During the 2023 NFL season, controversy erupted late in a Sunday Night Football matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and New York Jets when a defensive holding penalty on Jets cornerback Sauce Gardner extended a Kansas City drive in the fourth quarter. Replays suggested minimal contact, and critics quickly labelled it a “phantom hold”.
The call helped the Chiefs maintain possession and run down the clock to win 23–20.
In the NBA, the coach’s challenge system rule frequently exposes similar moments. A whistle is blown; a foul is signalled and then replay shows the contact never really occurred. The call is overturned. The arena erupts. Social media ignites.
The ghost vanishes. But the emotional residue remains.
Ghostly curses
Not surprisingly, sport is full of moments where the invisible shapes the visible. In fact, long before ghost screens and replay reviews, sport embraced ghosts in another form: curses.
The most famous was ‘The Curse of the Bambino.’
When Boston Red Sox owner Harry Frazee sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees after the 1919 season (reportedly to pay off debts), legend says the Red Sox invited decades of misery. Boston failed to win a World Series for 86 years. Every near miss (1946, 1967, 1975, and 1986) deepened the mythology.
The ghost of Ruth lingered until 2004, when the Red Sox staged the first comeback from a 3–0 deficit in Major League Baseball (MLB) postseason history against the New York Yankees in the American League Championship Series and then swept the World Series.
Another famous hex was ‘The Curse of the Billy Goat.’
In 1945, tavern owner William Sianis was asked to remove his pet goat from Wrigley Field during a World Series game because other fans had complained about the smell. Outraged, Sianis allegedly cursed the Chicago Cubs, declaring they would never win another title.
For more than a century, his jinx seemed to hold water. The Cubs failed to win a World Series for 108 years — until their dramatic championship run in 2016.
These weren’t just stories. They were organising myths. They shaped identity. They explained failure. Ghosts provided narrative comfort in randomness and cultural memory.
But what if the most consequential ghosts aren’t in stadium folklore, but in the executive suite?
Ghosts in the boardroom
Deborah Ancona of Harvard Business School introduced the idea of “family ghosts” in the executive suite (Harvard Business Review, 2022). Her argument is simple but powerful: leaders carry unconscious scripts from childhood into positions of authority.
Family dynamics – rivalry, approval-seeking, rebellion, confrontation, silence – become invisible templates for how leaders respond to conflict, power, and risk. A chief executive who grew up competing for attention may over-index on visibility. One raised in instability may avoid decisive action to preserve harmony. An argumentative family may have created lifelong conflict avoidance.
These ghosts are not metaphorical in impact, but they shape decision-making. Ancona has since expanded the idea into a forthcoming book – suggesting that what haunts leaders is not only market pressure, but memory.
That got us thinking. If family ghosts shape business leaders broadly, what additional ghosts might uniquely haunt sport business leaders?
The unique ghosts of sport
1. The player’s ghost
Many sport executives were once players. Their understanding of authority, fairness, discipline and loyalty was formed in locker rooms – shaped by coaches, captains and front office owner/GM decisions that may have been formative or traumatic.
A former player-turned-executive may:
- Over-identify with athletes in labour negotiations.
- Underestimate commercial realities.
- Overcorrect in attempting to square past grievances.
Those early experiences don’t disappear. They echo.
2. The ghost of the charismatic predecessor
Some organisations are still led by the memory of a previous titan. The legendary commissioner, transformative owner or championship architect.
Even after departure, their presence lingers – in how decisions are benchmarked, how stakeholders compare styles and in how boards tend to whisper: “That’s not how she would have done it.”
The ghost doesn’t just haunt the new leader. It constrains imagination.
3. The ghost of past success
Championships can become phantoms. What worked in 1998 or 2008 may be invoked reflexively in 2026. “We’ve always done it this way” is often less logic or tradition than apparition.
In a period of AI, streaming fragmentation, name, image and likeness (NIL) volatility and global capital flows, the most dangerous ghost may be past dominance.
4. The ghost of the last crisis
Leaders shaped by Covid-era revenue collapses (or contemporary declarations of war) may default to caution – even when boldness is required. Conversely, those forged in turnaround moments may seek disruption unnecessarily.
Why? Because every crisis leaves a residue.
How to deal with ghosts
Executives don’t banish ghosts by denying them. They surface them. Ancona’s prescription begins with reflection: Identifying the unconscious narratives shaping behaviour.
In sport, that may mean asking:
- What past experience is driving this instinct?
- Is this strategy responding to today’s market – or yesterday’s trauma?
- Are we honouring tradition – or obeying it?
It’s a long way of saying the best leaders don’t exorcise history and they don’t run scared. They contextualise it.
Think of it this way: ghost screens work because defenders react without thinking. The elite defender adjusts – waits – sees the slip. Similarly, sport business leadership may require the same discipline: Recognising when we are reacting to something that isn’t actually there.
Ghosts are everywhere in sport. Like spirits in the material world, the question is not whether they exist. It’s whether you know which ones are calling the plays.
John Cairney is currently head of the University of Queensland’s School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences. In August, he will become the Dean of the School of Kinesiology at the University of Michigan. Rick Burton is an honorary professor at UQ, Syracuse University’s David B. Falk Emeritus Professor of Sport Management, former Commissioner of Australia’s National Basketball League (NBL) and co-author of The Rise of Major League Soccer (Lyons Press).