J. Cole, the 6’3″ rapper who has already played basketball for teams in Rwanda and Toronto, will be headed to Nanjing, China for his next basketball opportunity where he is joining the Nanjing Monkey Kings. Footage of Cole attending a Monkey Kings game circulated on social media on Thursday.
ESPN, which first reported the news, said Cole had committed to playing a few games for the Monkey Kings but did not specify a number. The Monkey Kings is a high-profile team for Cole, as they previously featured Americans Willie Cauley-Stein and Antonio Blakeney and the Senegalese born Tacko Fall, who have all played in the NBA.
A rep for Cole did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone’s request for comment.
Cole, 41, played basketball in high school while growing up in Fayetteville, North Carolina. In 2021, he played three games as a guard for the Basketball Africa League’s Rwanda Patriots; he averaged 1.7 points and 1.7 rebounds a game, according to the Times. A year later, he joined the Canadian Elite Basketball League’s Scarborough Shooting Stars in Toronto, where he upped his average to 2.4 points a game with 0.6 rebounds and 0.4 assists. In 2012, he played in the NBA Celebrity Game.
The rapper, who has won two Grammys, mentioned the possibility of playing ball in China, specifically for the Monkey Kings, in podcasts while promoting his latest album, The Fall-Off, which came out in February. In one, Cole told Cam’Ron that the Monkey Kings had offered him a position last year. “I’m looking at the clock like, boy, I’m getting older,” Cole said, according to the Times. “This might be my last shot. I’m going to keep my word to them and show up and play a couple of games. … I’m going to go out there and have fun with it.”
“[J. Cole] coming to China can really raise the CBA’s profile on a global scale,” the team’s general manager, Zhen Wang, said in a clip posted to social media (via Billboard). “Since he’s the minority owner of the Charlotte Hornets, we’re hoping that through his position, he can maybe help more of our domestic players get opportunities to train and play in the U.S.”
