I use it to give credit to peers if I've done something good (and maybe to take/share some blame if I wasn't directly responsible). The one that makes me cringe is people saying us/we when referring to their preferred sportsball team though

For this reason I've never understood the emotion "pride" when applied to anything you didn't personally do.

For example pride in getting a bug fixed, or running a personal record lap, makes perfect sense. But "proud to be an American," or "proud of our troops," "proud of some sports team," I just don't get it.

Ah, in that sense yeah, I also feel similarly. I thought that the article was written by someone on the discovering team, hence my confusion.