{"id":379077,"date":"2026-04-03T00:04:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T00:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/379077\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T00:04:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T00:04:08","slug":"j-cole-joins-chinese-basketball-team-the-nanjing-monkey-kings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/379077\/","title":{"rendered":"J. Cole Joins Chinese Basketball Team the Nanjing Monkey Kings"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tJ. Cole<\/a>, the 6\u20193\u2033 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<\/a> on Thursday.<\/p>\n

\n\tESPN<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tA rep for Cole did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n

\n\tCole, 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 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\u2019Ron that the Monkey Kings had offered him a position last year. \u201cI\u2019m looking at the clock like, boy, I\u2019m getting older,\u201d Cole said, according to the Times. \u201cThis might be my last shot. I\u2019m going to keep my word to them and show up and play a couple of games. \u2026 I\u2019m going to go out there and have fun with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201c[J. Cole] coming to China can really raise the CBA\u2019s profile on a global scale,\u201d the team\u2019s general manager, Zhen Wang, said in a clip posted to social media<\/a> (via Billboard<\/a>). \u201cSince he\u2019s the minority owner of the Charlotte Hornets, we\u2019re hoping that through his position, he can maybe help more of our domestic players get opportunities to train and play in the U.S.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"J. Cole, the 6\u20193\u2033 rapper who has already played basketball for teams in Rwanda and Toronto, will be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93,61,60,66758,278],"class_list":{"0":"post-379077","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-j-cole","12":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}