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As Tim Grover walked out of the Hall of Fame induction speech four years ago, the observances of Michael Jordan's old slights, the settling of old scores, had already come and gone in the trainer's mind. All those years with Jordan, and Grover understood to always be lurching toward tomorrow with the game's greatest player.

"I heard that speech differently than everybody else," Grover said. Grover heard Jordan raising the idea of playing in the NBA in his 50s, and that was all the nod he needed to begin preparations.

"If I ever get that call," Grover said, "I was going to be prepared for it. And I am."

Fifty pages inside a binder sit on Grover's desk inside his suburban Chicago home now, information and studies and research and innovations into regenerating the muscle fibers and anti-aging advances and nutrition. From his trips to Europe and Asia and the Far East, Grover has incorporated a small library of intelligence – backed with the most intimate knowledge of Jordan's body and mind and drive – to create a program that awaits the comeback of all comebacks at 50 years old.

"There's no doubt in my mind, that right now, Michael is still the best player on the Charlotte Bobcats," Grover said.

[Related: Top 50 Michael Jordan moments: Nos. 50-37, including Nike 'marriage']

Grover had designed the comeback programs from basketball to baseball, from baseball to basketball and back again in Jordan's 40s. In a book to be released in April, "Relentless: From Good to Great to Unstoppable," Grover finally marches the public behind the curtain of decades of work with the likes of Jordan and Kobe Bryant, a riveting read that balances the illumination of the work of those stars and how it can apply to everyone else.

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For most of Jordan's and Bryant's and Dwyane Wade's careers, Grover was the guy behind the guy. For him, everything started with his work with Jordan, whose trust and belief in Grover transcended Grover's credibility with the next generation of basketball stars.

For all the discussions about why Jordan left the NBA the first time for baseball after the 1993-94 season – the suspicions that it was a gambling-related suspension – Grover says that Jordan grabbed him after the '93 title and told him to start a conditioning program to transition him to baseball.

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