Jersey harness racing legend talks Nuggets star Nikola Jokic’s passion for horse racing
It was late April, toward the end of a season that could easily end in a Nuggets championship, and Denver just completed a back-to-back set against the Knicks and Nets. The next game was in Washington D.C., but apparently Nikola Jokic first needed to scratch an itch.
So according to a friend and fellow horse-racing enthusiast, Jokic called a superstar audible on the team’s travel plans.
“They were taking the train to Washington and he made them wait three more hours so he could work with horses,” Tim Tetrick told the Daily News. “I joked to him, ‘So you’re like Dennis Rodman. You got to get your fix.’”
As Tetrick understands well, Jokic’s cravings aren’t nearly as destructive as Rodman’s famous Vegas escapades involving booze and Carmen Electra. Jokic, increasingly recognized as the best basketball player on the planet, is hooked on horses. Specifically, race horses.
The passion led to a connection with Tetrick, 41, a Hall of Fame New Jersey-based harness racer who has been dominating the Meadowlands track, among other hot spots, for over 15 years.
Following a text exchange, Tetrick became Jokic’s guide to the racing scene in America, with an emphasis on the New Jersey area. In January, for instance, Jokic landed in Philadelphia at 3:30 a.m. before a game against the Sixers, and was knocking on Tetrick’s door by 6 a.m. They drove to a horse farm, then the Dover Downs racetrack.
Last season, Jokic flew into New York and met Tetrick at the Meadowlands track before dropping 32 points on the Knicks.
“He told me, ‘My job is basketball, but my passion is horse racing,’” Tetrick said. “(Jokic) said, ‘I would trade you jobs in a heartbeat if it paid better.’
“Just a down-to-earth kind of dude. Lowkey,” Tetrick added. “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.”
Tetrick estimates he took Jokic to ‘six or seven’ different farms. But Jokic only trains the horses. He observes and jogs with them. Racing is out of the question. Jokic’s body is worth too much to risk injury.
“I was going to have a match race with him and he said, ‘Tim I want to so bad, but the insurance is not going to let me,’” Tetrick, who has won over 12,000 races with over $250 million in career earnings, said.
Visually, it’s an unlikely pairing. Jokic is a 7-foot giant. Tetrick is 5-7. Jokic’s slow-developing and improvisational basketball game is pretty much the opposite of horse racing.
But Jokic fell in love with animals long before basketball. The passion developed in his home country of Serbia, where Jokic hung around the stables and raced as an amateur.
To the uninitiated, it’s a mysterious pleasure. Tetrick explained the draw.
“He’s an athlete. And most of the standardbred breeds and thoroughbred breeds, they’re athletes, too,” Tetrick said. “I think he sees the effort he has taken in training to get in top form, to be able to do what he does, to get through that seven-game series. Compared to the horses, and same with us. When we get ready for a big race, our horses have to be fit, they have to be sound, they have to be healthy. Same thing with players. There are times when they don’t play because they’re sore. Same way with the horses. If they’re sore, they can’t compete. Our horses in our sport, we treat them like an NBA basketball player and we give them every they can ever need.
“I love going to the barn and seeing those beautiful animals. It’s like having a good dog. They’re fun to be around. You can tell the difference between a champion horse and the one that’s going to make the JV team. It’s their attitude. Like Joker’s brothers are bigger than him. And he said they can’t play basketball at all.”
While touring and ingratiating himself in the local horse racing community, Jokic developed a loyal fanbase. Tetrick said he received hundreds of excited texts Wednesday after the Nuggets cruised to an easy Game 3 Finals win over the Heat.
Jokic also texted Tetrick before tipoff. The subject? A harness race from days earlier at the Yonkers Raceway.
“I said, you got a game in 30 minutes,” Tetrick recalled.
Jokic did just fine, by the way: Thirty-two points, 21 rebounds, 10 assists. Pretty soon he’ll get to enjoy the stables more often. Perhaps with an NBA Finals MVP on his resume.
“Every time we’ve rode around and driven around with me, spent 10 to 12 hours in a car, he’s like, don’t talk to me about basketball. Let’s talk about horses,” Tetrick said. “And I’m like, I don’t want to talk about horses.”
