Winning

Tim S. Grover is a performance coach and CEO of Attack Athletics, renowned for his work with elite NBA players including Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and Dwyane Wade. Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness is his second book, following Relentless: From Good to Great to Unstoppable (2013). Drawing on more than three decades of experience training professional athletes and advising business leaders, Grover presents 13 principles that define what it takes to win, not through motivational platitudes but through an unflinching account of the sacrifice, mental toughness, and obsession the pursuit demands.

The book opens with Grover recounting his final phone call with Kobe Bryant, one week before Kobe, his daughter Gianna, and seven others died in a helicopter crash on January 26, 2020. Kobe's parting words, that he was always chasing a win and never done, establish the book's central premise. Grover personifies Winning as a capricious, cruel force that rewards and punishes without explanation, and broadens the concept beyond championships to include everyday victories: finishing a workout, ending a bad relationship, or simply getting up each day. He rejects numbered steps to success, arguing the path to winning is infinite and constantly shifting. He references the 2020 documentary The Last Dance, about Jordan and the Chicago Bulls' final championship run, as a catalyst for the book.

Before presenting his framework, Grover challenges the language surrounding success. He dismisses overused terms like "legend" and "epic," redefines motivation as a temporary rush rather than the sustained internal drive winners possess, and warns that the book will address what competitors actually endure: loneliness, exhaustion, fear, and the toll of pursuing greatness. He asks readers to define winning in one word. Common answers include "glorious" and "triumph"; elite performers respond with "uncivilized," "unforgiving," and "unapologetic." Kobe's answer was "Everything" (14). Grover presents all 13 principles, each ranked number one to signal equal importance.

The first principle argues that winning makes you different, and different scares people. Grover recounts establishing game-day workouts for Jordan, a practice unheard of in the NBA at the time, whose results silenced skeptics. He distinguishes between knowing how to think and being told what to think, illustrating through unconventional decisions: having Jordan do bicep curls for their intimidation factor, feeding him steak before games during an era of carbohydrate-loading, and instructing him to grab his shorts when fatigued rather than stand upright as coaches prescribed. The principle extends to Kobe, who trained in the Las Vegas desert at high noon, and to NBA star LeBron James, who reshaped the league by choosing where and with whom to play.

The second principle asserts that winning wages war on the battlefield of the mind. Grover describes the mind as under constant assault from self-generated explosives: doubt, insecurity, and deceptively kind thoughts like "You've already won." He advocates for disciplined routines that bypass mental indecision, detailing Jordan's meticulous game-day habits, while stressing that winners must also handle the unpredictable. The third principle presents winning as the ultimate gamble on yourself. Grover offers his most concise comparison of Jordan and Kobe: "Kobe worked harder. MJ worked smarter" (59). He catalogs defining humiliation-to-confidence moments: Jordan cut from his high school team, quarterback Tom Brady drafted 199th, Kobe's infamous "airball game" as a rookie, and Bulls teammate Scottie Pippen starting college as a team equipment manager. Confidence, Grover argues, is the product of being broken repeatedly and discovering how strong you truly are.

The fourth principle contends that winning is not heartless but demands using your heart less. Grover introduces the formula MIND > FEELINGS, arguing that champions prioritize thoughts over emotions. He provides a sequential framework: Control your thoughts to control your emotions, your emotions to control your actions, your actions to control the outcome. The ideal competitive state is "controlled rage," being calm and aggressive simultaneously. The fifth principle explores extreme competitiveness, opening with Jordan's acknowledgment of "a competition problem" (91). Grover recounts arriving at Jordan's house to audition as his trainer, wearing Converse shoes with a hole in his sock while Jordan was a Nike athlete, and being given 30 days to prove himself. He distinguishes being competitive from being a winner, and differentiates friends who tell you what you want to hear from allies who tell you what you need to hear.

The sixth principle declares that balance is incompatible with elite achievement. Grover opens with a painful anecdote: his five-year-old daughter asked, "If I eat less, can you stay home more?" (105). He introduces two practical tools: the "IDGAF muscle" (the "I Don't Give a Fuck muscle"), which enables decisive action on priorities, and the "NO List," a reminder to stop adding commitments and start deleting them. The seventh principle reframes selfishness as necessary, distinguishing selfish winners who invest in themselves to ultimately serve others from selfish losers who take and produce nothing. Grover introduces the concept of separation, not just from others but from one's own limiting beliefs, sharing his own defiance of his Indian immigrant parents' expectation that he become a doctor in order to pursue athletic training.

The eighth principle describes winning as a cyclical journey through hell. Grover recounts beginning work with Kobe after Jordan directed Kobe to call him about his deteriorating knees, declaring, "The road to paradise starts in hell" (138). A grueling regimen led to Kobe's fourth and fifth championships in 2009 and 2010. Grover frames winning as requiring ever-more-powerful doses: Each victory raises the bar for the next. The ninth principle distinguishes fear from doubt: Fear heightens awareness, while doubt paralyzes. Grover introduces the Four Rings of Winning as concentric circles moving inward from talent to intelligence to competitiveness and finally to resilience, the power to stay in the fight when everything goes wrong.

The tenth principle explores the "dark side" as a personal fuel source. Grover revisits the concept from Relentless, clarifying it is not about evil but about the internal place that allows total focus on winning. He details Kobe's creation of the "Black Mamba" alter ego, a hyper-intense competitive persona inspired by the film Kill Bill, and warns that Mamba Mentality, Kobe's name for this relentless competitive mindset, has destroyed more careers than it has helped. He introduces the "darker side" as an evolution: The dark side wins battles; the darker side wins the war. The eleventh principle demands radical honesty. Grover tells an underperforming rookie, "To have what you really want, you first must be who you really are" (187), and attacks performative hustle culture, insisting on "Plan A thinking" with no backup options to serve as excuses. The twelfth principle dismantles the cliché "It's a marathon, not a sprint," arguing for managing focus rather than managing time and presenting Kobe as its embodiment.

The final principle, "WINNING is everything," synthesizes the preceding twelve. Grover explains that conventional topics like hard work and teamwork are absent because the 13 principles provide the foundation that makes those virtues possible. He identifies winners' deepest fear as not losing but running out of time, connecting this directly to Kobe. He reflects on watching former clients grow into fathers, cultural icons, and business leaders, and shares his father Surjit Singh Grover's final words: When Grover protested he was not as strong, his father replied, "You're right. You're stronger" (220). Despite the brutality of the race, Grover insists there must always be joy. The book closes with Winning's message: "Welcome. The race is over. The price has been paid. For now" (223).