"Doc, the pill you gave me made me vomit uncontrollably all day, and once I recovered I realized that I was still as sick as before."
"Oh yeah? Well what about all the times I told people to get some rest and drink lots of fluids?"
Yes, I can see how this would be a good success strategy.
(I do agree that it's important to recognize when you're doing the right thing, especially in a creative field. But when you're playing a game according to strict rules, on a team, the need to avoid failure is probably greater than the need to avoid success. Especially when you consider that the people who make it to these teams probably emphasized pursuing success over avoiding failure when they were younger, because someone in the 50th percentile in a professional sport might have been in the 99th percentile as an amateur. If nothing else, they should dampen their individuality to reflect the higher average performance of their peers).
In certain sports, anyway. In other fields -- customer service, for example -- things are different.