SAN DIEGO — As if NBA Finals MVP wasn’t enough, Nikola Jokic followed his most accomplished NBA season with his most successful summer ever on the racetrack.
Jokic estimated Friday that 2023 has been the best year for his horse stable, called Dream Catcher, but purely because of quantity; he bought more horses and therefore won more races.
“We grew. We grew,” Jokic said at Nuggets training camp. “My horses everywhere — I have them in France, Italy, Serbia. They’re all winning races, so I’m happy.”
Then, catching himself, he added: “They don’t need to be winning races. That’s my hobby. I just wish that they are healthy and that they run good. They don’t need to win.”
Jokic’s own star horses include Brenno Laumar and Amy Del Duomo, but his broad fandom of the sport was on display Friday. After leaving the basketball court for the final time this week, he pulled up a live race happening in Lexington, Kentucky, to watch on his phone. He said he plans to buy more horses and continue building his stable someday when he retires from basketball. “I love it,” he said. “It’s my passion. It puts me outside of this thing.”
Murray’s hamstring
Jamal Murray was dealing with a minor hamstring injury Friday, Michael Malone said, but the Denver point guard was still able to play two quarters of the Nuggets’ full-length scrimmage. Starters in general didn’t participate in the final quarter of the scrimmage anyway. “Nothing serious,” Malone said.
The coach was struck throughout the week by what he saw as an increase in Murray’s physical strength. He believes in spite of any hamstring tweaks, Murray is better positioned for individual success now than he was this time last year, when he hadn’t been fully healthy all offseason.
“I think, mentally, being in a place where the game has continued to slow down for him,” Malone said. “Seeing the game, reading the game, and he and I are always communicating. … I love picking his brain about, ‘Which young players have you enjoyed playing with this week?’ He’s just in a really good place mentally, which coming out of what he went through prior to coming back — that was a really hard time for him. So just as somebody who cares so much about Jamal as a person, it’s so great to be around him and see how comfortable he is in his own skin.”
Error or motivational tactic? “2024 NBA champions”
On the last day of training camp, the big screen overlooking the practice gyms at U.C. San Diego featured a new message.
The previous three days, it read, “Welcome Denver Nuggets, 2023 NBA Champions.” This time, the wording was: “2024 NBA Champions.”
Malone, before leaving with the team to fly back to Denver, claimed the change was designed “to speak it into existence.”
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