Late last month, the morning after the Nuggets had played a game in Los Angeles, players slowly made their way into a hotel ballroom for a team breakfast before the team was scheduled to fly home to Denver.



Sitting at a table by himself was a wide-eyed Nikola Jokic, staring intently at his phone while many of his teammates were still waking up. Streaming on his device was footage of a horse race taking place on the other side of the world, and Jokic had a rooting interest.



“Right now in Serbia and Hungary, where I follow horses and my friends, they are starting to race, and I follow it a lot,” Jokic said last week, two days before the NBA season was abruptly suspended in the wake of the worldwide coronavirus outbreak.



Jokic’s affinity for horses is no secret. When asked during his media availability at All-Star weekend in Chicago in what facet of life he considers himself to be an all-star other than basketball, he replied: “Horse...