J. Cole Heads To China To Play For Nanjing Monkey Kings

J. Cole’s still not letting his professional basketball dreams fall to the wayside.

The Fayetteville rapper has announced that instead of getting on the road to promote his album, The Fall-Off, he’s headed to China to play for the Chinese Basketball Association’s (CBA) Nanjing Monkey Kings.

According to ESPN NBA insider Shams Charania, he committed to playing a few games last year, and now he’s been called to ball out.

The CBA has become a second home for NBA players despite a cap on foreign players. Since its inception in 1995, past players included Stephon Marbury, Tracy McGrady, Metta World Peace, Jeremy Lin, and J.R. Smith.

As for the team Cole’s playing for, the Monkey Kings, Antonio Blakeney, Tacko Fall, and Willie Cauley-Stein all call themselves alums.

Cole going overseas for basketball shouldn’t be too surprising, since he spoke about it on Cam’ron’s Talk With Flee podcast.

“The basketball sh-t is like me just trying to scratch a last itch of, let me see if I can do this,” Cole said during the interview. “Could I train and be able to go play professionally because these teams in these leagues are looking at it like, ‘He’s not ass. He can come be on the court, and he can give our league some publicity.’”

Still, he’s acknowledged that at 41, he doesn’t have the hops he once had, but he can still contribute.

“I’m looking at the clock like, boy, I’m getting older. This might be my last shot,” he continued. “I’m going to keep my word to them and show up and play a couple of games, although I know I’m not in the best of shape because the album. I’m going to go out there and have fun with it.”

Cole’s other professional basketball stints include 2021, when he played three games for the Patriots BBC in Rwanda for the Basketball Africa League (BAL).

Then, the following year, he joined the Scarborough Shooting Stars in the Canadian Elite Basketball League after a conversation with OVO member Nicholas “Niko” Carino at Drake’s birthday.

He only played in four games before he had to go on tour for The Off-Season.

See how social media is reacting to Cole’s latest jump to the pros below.