Vivek Ranadivé, a software entrepreneur and future NBA team owner, decided to coach his 12-year-old daughter’s middle school basketball team in Redwood City, California.

He didn’t grow up with the game, didn’t play it, didn’t know its culture – he just wanted to help. Vivek had a major problem – not only did he know nothing about the game, but neither did his girls. Most of them had never played a single minute of organized basketball.

But Vivek wasn’t the type to do something halfway. From the moment he signed up, his goal was to win the state championship that season.

If he had told anyone, they might’ve laughed him out of the gym. But he started studying, watching games, trying to understand how basketball worked – and the more he learned, the more something didn’t sit right.

After every score, teams would run back to the other end of the court, settle into formation, and wait to play defense. It was tradition. It was how the game was done. But to Vivek, it seemed like an unnecessary surrender, giving the other team a free pass for most of the court. Why retreat when you could press?

Without breaking a single rule, Vivek taught his team a strategy called full-court press: to stay on top of their opponents, disrupt every inbound, and apply pressure at every pass. It wasn’t illegal. But he was breaking unwritten rules.

“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” – Pablo Picasso

And by the end of the season, that little team of underdogs was breaking all the unwritten rules – and was winning big.

Top performers don’t follow rules – they rethink them. Research at Harvard Business School and Columbia shows that people who break norms (nonconformists) are often perceived as more powerful and more competent. One study found that entrepreneurs who take strategic risks and ignore conventional advice are more likely to create successful ventures than those who play it safe.

The girls weren’t great dribblers, couldn’t shoot from distance, and had no height advantage. But they had something nobody else did: an unconventional strategy and unwavering attitude.

As the first games kicked off, Redwood City stunned opponents with how quickly they scored – and how consistently they pressed.

They jumped out to early leads – 4‑0, 6‑0, even 12‑0. One game ended with them leading 25‑0 before the other team even scored. Instead of retreating after scoring, they hustled back, applied pressure on every inbounds pass, and swarmed players off the ball. Teams used to long periods of transition now found themselves stuck in chaos before they could cross midcourt.

Opposing coaches fumed on the sidelines. One even confronted Vivek in the parking lot, furious that this “skinny foreign guy” was defying tradition – and winning. Every whistle signaled a barrage of fouls called on Redwood City – referees seemed determined to break them. But the girls adjusted. Instead of folding, they learned to play without pressing at times, weaving traditional basketball in between the chaos.

Through all the drama, they stayed unbeaten in most of their regular season. They won the local league, then the regionals, then advanced deep into the Northern California tournament. Each win built their stamina, sharpened their cohesion, and deepened belief in the system and each other.

By season’s end, Redwood City had stormed through their local league and advanced to the national Junior Basketball championship tournament!

In the end, Redwood City didn’t win the national championship. They came up short in the final rounds. But by then, the point had already been proven.

A team of middle school girls with no height, no elite skills, and no basketball pedigree had made it to the biggest stage in the country for teams their age – by doing what nobody else dared to do.

They didn’t cheat. They didn’t bend the rulebook. But they did break the unwritten rules – the ones that say, “This is how the game is supposed to be played.”

They rewrote the script. And almost won it all.

Because sometimes, if you want to win – if you want to slay the giants, shatter the odds, or change the game – you don’t follow the rules.

You break them.

With intention. With intelligence. With guts.

And sometimes, that’s enough to change everything.

• Toby Moore is a Shaw Local News Network columnist, star of the Emmy-nominated film “A Separate Peace,” and CEO of CubeStream Inc. He can be reached at feedback@shawmedia.com.