Famous handshakes in sport: tribute to team rituals

When a player launches into a back-slapping handshake with a teammate after a three-pointer, a goal, or a touchdown, the moment lasts only a second yet carries the weight of countless practices, bus rides, and film sessions. These pre-choreographed greetings have become shorthand for trust between athletes who rarely need words to communicate. Across the NFL, NBA, NHL, and college ranks, handshakes function as muscle memory for friendship, a celebration script quietly rehearsed long before the spotlight arrives.

Australian sports fans recognise that same language of brotherhood, whether watching the Socceroos in Melbourne, following the BBL in Sydney, or tuning into the AFL grand final from a Perth pub. The rituals may look different, a nod from the captain of a rugby squad or a forearm bump between cricket teammates running between wickets, but the meaning is identical. Handshakes in sport function as visual shorthand for loyalty, signalling that no matter how loud the crowd, the locker room has its own private dialect that turns a roster into a family.

The deep roots of athletic handshakes

The modern handshake has roots stretching back centuries, evolving from a way to show you held no weapon into a universal gesture of peace. By the twentieth century, athletes had begun layering personal meaning onto the gesture, and by the 1970s and 1980s, choreographed celebrations were cropping up in nearly every major American league. Coaches tolerated the rituals as a release valve for adrenaline, a way to turn raw post-victory energy into something more structured. Players leaned into them, knowing a perfectly timed handshake was a small rebellion against the seriousness of professional sport.

Some historians note that televised coverage accelerated the trend, since a celebration caught on camera could become instantly iconic. Once league offices began policing excessive choreography, players shifted the routine to the locker room or the tunnel, where it became a private marker of belonging. Today, fans in Adelaide watch a highlight clip and recognise a sequence the way they would recognise a favourite song lyric, a shared cultural artefact tying them to their team and millions of strangers who live for the same colours.

The endurance of these traditions reveals what athletes actually need from one another. The rituals act as emotional scaffolding, holding a group together through losing streaks, road trips, and the inevitable roster churn of professional sport. Long after championship banners fade, fans remember which teammate ran which handshake with whom, proof that the smallest gestures often outlast the loudest victories.

The psychology of these rituals runs deeper than the surface celebration. Researchers have noted that structured rituals reduce anxiety and reinforce group identity, traits elite performers across disciplines tend to cultivate deliberately. OCD and ritual behaviour is part of how the human brain craves pattern, a useful framework for understanding why even casual fans feel something when they see their team run the same handshake for the tenth time that season.

Iconic NBA handshakes and the duos behind them

The NBA has produced more celebrated handshake sequences than any other league, because the frequent scoring bursts give them reason to celebrate after nearly every possession. The most famous belongs to Shaquille O'Neal and Penny Hardaway in Orlando, a series of bumps, points, and daps that looked like a private comedy routine every time it aired. Decades on, those clips still circulate among fans in Sydney and Melbourne pubs during the NBA Finals, with younger viewers asking cousins what the original Magic duo actually did on the court. The partnership ended when trades reshuffled the roster, but the handshake never stopped collecting cultural airtime.

Other legendary combinations include Rajon Rondo's intricate routines with his Boston teammates, Ricky Rubio and Kevin Love's high-bowling flourish in Minnesota, and the long-running sequence between Chris Paul and Blake Griffin in Lob City. The NBA coverage at Say It Again tracks these moments closely, treating them as cultural artefacts as much as basketball events. Even when teammates drift to opposite conferences, fans love spotting an old handshake buried inside a new celebration, a small reminder that bonds forged in the locker room rarely dissolve.

A newer generation has added its own catalogue, with Stephen Curry and Draymond Green's chest-bump-and-finger-point becoming the Warriors' signature flourish during their dynastic run. Each championship team seemed to come with its own handshake inventory, an unofficial ledger that fans and players kept updated together. The genius of the ritual is its portability, since a routine created on one club can travel across the league whenever a player signs with a new team.

Football rituals from college towns to Australian codes

The NFL has its own catalogue, with simple chest bumps and forearm shakes carrying meaning precisely because the league has spent decades discouraging anything that might draw a flag. Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski rarely had an elaborate routine, but their understated nods became a kind of anti-celebration, a cool counterpoint to louder personalities. College football, with fewer restrictions and deeper ties between players who dorm together for years, has produced some of the wildest pre-snap rituals in all of sport. Anything goes in a college locker room, a keep-it-loose approach that bleeds into the entertainment side of college athletics.

Australian codes echo the same emotional core, with AFL players in Melbourne sharing a quiet back-pat after a contested mark, and NRL squads in Sydney layering personal flourishes onto their post-try routines. Rugby players who share a season together develop shorthand that survives international tours. In Brisbane, fans watching the State of Origin series often point out the small movements between teammates as much as the tries, proof that the Australian game values connection as much as athleticism.

What makes football rituals unique is their unpredictability, since the same moment can produce a celebration one week and a fist-shake of frustration the next, with both reactions carrying weight. By the time the grand final arrives, the routine has usually been refined into something sharper, tighter, and more meaningful, ready to be remembered for years.

Baseball traditions and the rivalries that shape them

Baseball, the slowest of the major North American sports, has produced some of the most deliberate handshake traditions, with players tipping caps or tapping gloves in sequences so familiar they almost pass unnoticed. The Dodgers and Padres rivalry is one of the league's most volatile, a simmering feud where every regular-season game feels like a playoff preview. Recent history between the two clubs, captured in this Dodgers-Padres rivalry piece, shows how dugout tensions and tight division races have produced handshakes that carry extra weight. The meaning is different for the men exchanging them than for the fans in the seats, a quiet signal that respect runs underneath even the fiercest rivalries.

Players from rival clubs develop complex handshakes of their own, since competing against the same opponents hundreds of times builds familiarity that borders on camaraderie. The tip of the cap from one veteran to another, the glove tap between starting pitchers, and the dugout flurry after a walk-off homer are all part of what makes baseball feel less like a single game and more like a multi-decade dialogue. Australian fans who catch the MLB playoffs in October often note that the slower pace gives these gestures room to breathe, a welcome contrast to the constant motion on the cricket pitch back home.

Commentators down under give these small gestures more screen time during broadcasts, recognising that the patience of the sport invites more deliberate ritual. The tip of the helmet after a hit, the handshake at second base after a double play, and the dugout embraces after a pennant-clinching win read as chapters of a long-running story fans have followed for generations.

What these rituals teach players and fans

The ritual of the handshake does not end with the game. There are lessons in how these moments are built away from the field, with athletes keeping personal routines around sleep, nutrition, and mental preparation, treating their careers like a long-form project rather than a single match. Celebrities and wellness figures have built entire brands around similar five-minute habits, with one celebrity wellness brand showing how a small daily ritual can compound into something that defines a public identity. Athletes follow the same playbook, building micro-rituals that quietly stack into championship form.

The habit of ritual is not limited to sport, and gambling culture offers another window into how patterns shape decision-making. Even something as numerical as a blackjack return rate feeds into a gambler's sense of which rituals feel right, a mirror of the same superstitions athletes carry onto the field. In TAB venues in Parramatta and pubs in Carlton, fans place their bets with the same quiet confidence that a player shows when reaching for a teammate's hand after a goal.

Australian culture adds another dimension to the story, since sports betting sits beside the rituals of fandom itself. A punter in Hobart might have a lucky seat at the bar, a lucky shirt, and a handshake reserved for the moment their team scores first, treating superstition the way the betting slip treats numbers. Across codes and continents, the impulse is the same, building a small private structure to make a chaotic game feel knowable.

Handshake sequences that defined a generation

Lessons these traditions carry into life beyond the field