It seemed like all of harness racing was rooting for the Denver Nuggets to win their first NBA championship on Monday night (June 12), and the reason is Nikola Jokić.
Jokić, considered by just about everyone who knows basketball to be the best player on Earth, led his Nuggets to a 94-89 victory over the Miami Heat, giving Denver a four-games-to-one win of the best-of-seven NBA Finals.
Maybe Jokić can now dedicate a bit more time to his other passion, harness racing.
“He told me, ‘My job is basketball, but my passion is horse racing,’” Tim Tetrick told the New York Daily News’ Stefan Bondy. “[Jokić] said, ‘I would trade jobs with you in a heartbeat if it paid better.’
Jokić and Tetrick met several years ago on Facebook.
“Just a down-to-earth kind of dude. Lowkey,” said Tetrick. “You wouldn’t know he gets paid $40 million a year to play basketball. He shows up with sweats to the barn. Then he’s got his training suit and jumps in and he just loves to hang out.”
Jokić visited The Big M in December of 2021 and checked out the action in the back paddock. When he was in town to play the Brooklyn Nets and New York Knicks in March of this year, ‘The Joker’ spent some time at Brett Pelling’s barn.
"He stopped in the barn earlier this spring,” said Pelling, pictured above with Jokić, Test Of Faith and son, Jack. “He came at six in the morning. He has good knowledge of the horses. He’s very eager to listen, and wants to talk about horses, not basketball. He’s really into learning. How do you train? How do you feed? Very good questions. He has a real base understanding. He was definitely absorbing information.”
Jokić, 28, grew up on a farm in Sombor, a city in the northern part of Serbia, where as a teenager he fell in love with horses, specifically trotters, at the track in his hometown and even worked there for six years cleaning stalls. He owns his own farm with a training track and, when Harness Racing Update did a feature about the triple-double King a year and a half ago, he owned about nine trotters.
Jokić is a two-time NBA MVP, and now, has added NBA champion and NBA Finals MVP to his resume. Maybe he’s now setting his sights on a Meadowlands Pace or Hambletonian trophy.
(Meadowlands Racetrack)