Horses and hoops for him

Barry Abrams, born in Minsk, Russia, came to the Fairfax district of Los Angeles with his family at age 9, and soon fell in love with basketball, particularly the Lakers.

And it was the Lakers who indirectly played a role in leading him to another love, horse racing.

Abrams, wearing a Lakers jacket as he almost always does, told the story while sitting at a table at Clocker’s Corner at Santa Anita, where he works as a trainer.

“I was 16 and had just gotten a driver’s license,” he said. “I drove down to the Forum to buy a Lakers playoff ticket. There was some kind of glitch, and I ended up standing in line all day.

“About 3 p.m., the guy in front of me asked me to save his place. He said he had to go next door to bet on a horse at Hollywood Park. I didn’t even know there was a racetrack there. He said he’d make a bet for me, $2 across on the No. 4 horse.

“He came back, said the horse won, and handed me $16. I was hooked.”

On both horse racing and the Lakers.

His ticket was for Game 3 of the 1970 NBA Finals between the Lakers and New York Knicks, the one where Jerry West hit the 63-foot shot at the buzzer to send the game into overtime. It didn’t matter that the Lakers ended up losing.

After that, Abrams became a fan in every sense of the word.

“I go to every game I can,” he said. “The only ones I miss are on Sunday afternoons when I have horses running.”

And he always wears a Lakers jacket. He owns five.

His wife Dyan, a New Yorker, is a converted Lakers fan and usually goes to the games with her husband.

Sometimes Abrams is a guest in owner Jerry Buss’ suite. Son Jim Buss, who also was a horse trainer before joining the Lakers’ front office 10 years ago, is a close friend of Abrams.

“I used to see him at the track and in the Forum Club,” Jim Buss said. “We had the Lakers and horse racing in common. He’s just a super guy, and he taught me a lot about horses. He has a knack of keeping ‘em running.”

When Buss left horse racing, he recommended to his owners, who included his father and partner Frank Mariani, that Abrams take over the horses he was training.

“And just the other day I recommended him to an owner,” Jim Buss said. “I’ll do that any time I get the opportunity. And that is out of respect, not because we are friends.”

As is the case with the Lakers, Abrams is currently on top of his game.

Today he’ll saddle Golden Doc A, the probable favorite in the Grade I, $300,000 Santa Anita Oaks for 3-year-old fillies at 1 1/16 miles. Rafael Bejarano, who leads the Santa Anita jockey standings, will be aboard, as he was when Golden Doc A won the Grade I Las Virgenes Stakes on Feb. 9.

That was only the second Grade I victory for Abrams in the 15 years he has been training thoroughbreds.

Abrams, his brother David and Madeline Auerbach, who formerly owned the horse, bred Golden Doc A, who is now owned by Ron McCauley. The mother is Penpont and the father is Unusual Heat, whose offspring have already won $800,000 this year, making him the leading sire in California.

Last Saturday, Abrams had two winners at Santa Anita, both sired by Unusual Heat.

“I’m feeling great, the Lakers are doing great, I have a good horse; life is very good right now,” said Abrams, who turned 54 Tuesday.

It was certainly a much better birthday than the one he experienced three years ago. That was the day he learned he had Stage 4 throat cancer.

A tumor in the throat area was inoperable, so Abrams underwent heavy-duty chemotherapy and radiation. The cancer is now in remission.

Dyan Abrams said: “I think the kind of person Barry is, very positive, and his knowing how to deal with horses got him through it.”

The chemo treatments were administered over a four-month period and included five straight days of hospitalization at a time, but that didn’t keep him from attending Lakers games.

He said Linda Rambis, the Lakers’ manager of special projects, arranged for him to sit in the third row near the first-aid station and an usher would help him to his seat.

“The Lakers and horse racing -- I had a laptop in my hospital room to watch and bet on races on websites -- that’s what kept me going,” Abrams said.

While a student at Cal State L.A., Abrams began working as a groom and also cleaned stalls. He worked his way up to assistant trainer, then in 1977 went to the Meadowlands in New Jersey to train harness horses.

He returned to Southern California 10 years later and was working as a carpet installer when his longtime friend, Roger Stein, talked him into joining him as a trainer of thoroughbreds.

“Barry was the best groom there ever was,” Stein said. “As a groom he could get inside a horse’s head and he could handle any kind of horse -- rogues, nasty ones, quiet ones. It’s also what makes him such a good trainer.”

larry.stewart@latimes.com