"There's always the motivation of wanting to win. Everybody has that. But a champion needs, in his attitude, a motivation above and beyond winning"
About this Quote
The phrase “in his attitude” is the tell. Riley isn’t romanticizing talent or preaching hustle as a personality trait; he’s pointing to an internal posture that survives boredom, pain, and success. “Above and beyond winning” is a reframing of ambition: the champion’s real motivation is identity-level. It’s pride in preparation, intolerance for slippage, obsession with details no crowd will applaud, and a willingness to be unglamorous long after the applause stops. It also quietly polices complacency. If winning is the goal, then winning can become permission to coast; if standards are the goal, winning is just a byproduct.
Context matters: Riley’s career spans Showtime excess, playoff bruising, and the modern NBA’s player empowerment era. He’s seen how quickly motivation curdles into entitlement, and how repeated success creates a new opponent: your own comfort. The line functions like a culture memo to a locker room: desire is baseline; discipline is the separator; legacy is the tax you pay daily.
Quote Details
| Topic | Motivational |
|---|---|
| Source | Evidence: A champion needs a motivation above and beyond winning. (Likely page 52; exact page for the full two-sentence form not fully verified). The strongest primary-source evidence points to Pat Riley's own book The Winner Within: A Life Plan for Team Players, published in 1993. Secondary sources that cite Riley's own work attribute the shorter form of the quote to that book, and one later source cites The Winner Within at pages 41 and 52. A 2009 interview with Coach & Athletic Director treats "A champion needs a motivation above and beyond winning" as an already-famous Riley quote, and Riley then paraphrases/explains it rather than presenting the longer wording as a fresh statement. I could verify the shorter sentence as tied to The Winner Within, but I could not directly inspect the original 1993 page image to confirm that the longer, commonly circulated version ("There's always the motivation of wanting to win. Everybody has that. But a champion needs, in his attitude, a motivation above and beyond winning") appears there verbatim. So the likely first publication is Riley's 1993 book, but the exact longer wording remains unconfirmed from a directly viewed primary-text page. Other candidates (1) Life Lessons of Wisdom & Motivation - Volume III (M.I. Seka, 2014) compilation97.1% ... There's always the motivation of wanting to win. Everybody has that. But a champion needs, in his attitude, a mot... |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Riley, Pat. (2026, March 7). There's always the motivation of wanting to win. Everybody has that. But a champion needs, in his attitude, a motivation above and beyond winning. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/theres-always-the-motivation-of-wanting-to-win-164363/
Chicago Style
Riley, Pat. "There's always the motivation of wanting to win. Everybody has that. But a champion needs, in his attitude, a motivation above and beyond winning." FixQuotes. March 7, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/theres-always-the-motivation-of-wanting-to-win-164363/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"There's always the motivation of wanting to win. Everybody has that. But a champion needs, in his attitude, a motivation above and beyond winning." FixQuotes, 7 Mar. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/theres-always-the-motivation-of-wanting-to-win-164363/. Accessed 14 Mar. 2026.
