The Surprising Connection Between NBA Players and Horse Racing Ownership

However, horse racing is a global sport and its adrenaline rush and prestige attracted many A-list celebrities and some popular athletes.

But why would NBA players be interested in horse racing? Well, horse racing is a fun sport to watch. It gives you that adrenaline rush as horses race to the finish line. Horse racing is also a popular sport to bet on, and many professional athletes even in the NBA want to test out their luck.

If you are in the same boat and like horse racing due to its betting action, make sure you use a horse bet payout calculator just to know how much money you might win. Horse racing is also a popular sport when it comes to investments and business.

Athletes don’t have long-lasting careers, which is why after their retirement, they are looking for a way to invest their millions earned in the NBA league, horse racing is often their first choice just because they are drawn by the action, and they are sticking to their athletic spirit.

Let’s go through the list of athletes who gained interest in the Sport of Kings.

Nikola Jokic

First off, we are in with an athlete who has been dominating the NBA league for a couple of years. Jokic or the Joker is quite a big horse racing fan, and his affinity for these incredible creatures has been well-documented.

However, there are many strange things we have to point out here. First of all, it is strange for an NBA athlete to be interested in horse racing, since there aren’t many people that have a connection between these two sports.

Additionally, horse racing isn’t particularly popular in his home country Serbia. So, how on earth did Jokic grow to become a horse racing fan?

Well, we have to go back to his early days as he was growing up around horses. As a kid, he balanced his time between basketball courts and horse stables. His passion for these animals runs in the family and he spent most of his holidays when he was a kid on the farm around horses.

We’ve seen Jokic even taking part in a harness race in his hometown, and he owns quite a few horses now. Although they don’t have a racing pedigree or powerful bloodline, Jokic loves being around them. He even joked about needing a plane to catch just to be able to see a popular horse racing event back home.

Some insiders suggest that he even got a ribbon from one of his horse’s victories in his locker.

He is without a doubt one of the biggest horse racing fans in the NBA.

Tony Parker

Tony Parker, although not active in the NBA anymore, had his fair share of moments in the league. After spending almost 20 years playing basketball professionally, finishing his career playing for the Charlotte Hornets, he had a change of heart.

Unlike Jokic, who was introduced to horse racing from an early age, it seems like Tony Parker developed a love for the sport of kings after he finished his NBA career.

Tony Parker is now a professional racehorse owner and we’ve seen his horses participating in many popular events across the world. He also opened a stable, which is called Infinity Nine Horses and his passion for horses and the sport goes to a point where he wanted to film his journey and make a documentary out of it.

We can sense that he is not doing it for the money. Horse racing has drawn him in and now Parker is quite passionate about owning horses.

Michael Jordan

Michael Jordan is a legendary name in the NBA and has definitely set standards in the league that athletes have been trying to reach for so long. After he retired from professional basketball, he became an entrepreneur investing in various businesses which made most of his fortune.

He also invested in horse racing, and we’ve seen Michael Jordan’s name as a co-owner of many popular horses.

One of his most successful horses was Knicks Go, which became the horse of the year in 2021.

However, apart from co-owning a few horses, we haven’t seen Jordan being passionate about the sport. He rarely attends horse racing events and never shared much information about his horse racing passion.

Rex Chapman

This is another former American professional basketball player who also dove into the muddy waters of horse racing. Champman was a high school phenom in Kentucky, and he won a couple of awards for his play.

After being noticed, he moved to the NBA where he spent most of his career playing for the Phoenix Suns, after making a bold decision that basketball wasn’t the perfect sport for him.

He turned to horse racing, which to be honest, is not surprising. After all, he grew up in Kentucky, the home of the most prestigious horse race in the world – The Kentucky Derby. Here horse racing runs in the blood of the locals.

Chapman invested in a lot of racehorses throughout the years, and he even has a horse track named in his honor at Santa Anita.