He’s now making millions of dollars playing in the National Basketball Association, but at one point all the now-6’10” athlete wanted to do was sit in the sulky and drive horses.

The NBA player in question is the Denver Nuggets’ Nikola Jokić, the hulking center that now takes to the low block and bangs and crashes with some of the most imposing figures in professional sports.

But at one time, when he was much younger and smaller, the 23-year-old Serbian yearned for the solace of his local raceway, and not the hardwood of various sporting arenas across North America.

Nikola Jokić, pictured driving a horse at his local raceway during his younger years (Image courtesy the Jokić Family / The Players’ Tribune)

The revelation of Jokić’s love for the sulky has come via an entry which was recently uploaded to The Players’ Tribune.

The piece starts out by saying, “It was all about horses for me.”

Jokić goes on to state that, “I always loved basketball, but when I was little — even when I was 13 and 14 — I was going to horse race. I didn’t even practice basketball that much. I went to the stables, just to be the stable boy. That was my life. I raced. Not professionally, but amateur. I even placed fourth one time. It was a nice hobby.”

The article goes on to outline how Jokić then got into basketball and what it was like playing in Serbia before he ultimately made his way to the NBA.

To read The Players’ Tribune piece in its entirety, click here.

(With files from The Players’ Tribune)