Tag: basketball africa league

J. Cole signs with Canadian basketball league to keep his hoop dreams alive

Cole is taking his talents from Rwanda to Toronto.

At this point, J. Cole’s love for basketball is well known. Not only does the rapper and producer frequently reference the NBA in his music, he played for Rwanda in the Basketball Africa League last year. In college, he nearly made the team at St. John’s as a walk-on, and last September, the 37-year-old practiced with the Orlando Magic.

We can debate about how good Cole actually is, but it’s clear he’s got a little game and isn’t ready to give up on playing professionally. This year, the Fayetteville, North Carolina, native is taking his talents to the Canadian Elite Basketball League as a member of the Scarborough Shooting Stars, the CEBL announced Thursday.

Scarborough — a district of Toronto, Ontario — is one of three expansion teams to begin their inaugural seasons in the CEBL this summer, bringing the league’s number of franchises up to 10. The Shooting Stars’ first game is on May 26, though Cole won’t likely be able to complete a full season, as he begins touring on June 10.

The team has another name that might be familiar to basketball fans, as former NBA All-Star Jamaal Magloire is Scarborough’s vice president and senior adviser. The team is partly owned by Nicholas Carino, one of the co-founders of J. Cole contemporary Drake’s OVO brand.

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J. Cole scores first pro points in Basketball Africa League debut

On Sunday, rapper J. Cole made his professional basketball debut as the Basketball Africa League tipped off its inaugural season in Rwanda.

On Sunday, rapper J. Cole made his professional basketball debut as the Basketball Africa League tipped off its inaugural season at the Kigali Arena in Rwanda.

Cole, whose real name is Jermaine Cole, recorded three points, three rebounds and two assists in 18 minutes for the Rwanda Patriots Basketball Club. Cole got on the board late in the first quarter with a putback layup following a missed shot from Steve Hagumintwari.

The Grammy Award winner played basketball in high school before briefly walking on at St. John’s. The debut by Cole came just two days after releasing his latest studio album, “The Off-Season,” on Friday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glZtR90Ic50

The BAL is a collaboration between the NBA and FIBA featuring 12 teams from 12 countries across Africa. Each team will have up to 13 players, at least nine of whom are citizens in their respective team’s home country and up to four of whom are from other countries.

The 12 teams will be placed into three groups of four. During the group phase, each team will face the three other teams in its group once. The top eight teams from the group phase will qualify for the playoffs, which will be single elimination in all three rounds.

In the United States, all BAL games will be available on ESPN+ with the first game and Finals also airing on ESPNews. NBA TV will broadcast 12 live games and select games on delay in the U.S. and around the world across the group phase, quarterfinals, semifinals and Finals.

This post originally appeared on Rookie Wire! Follow us on Facebook!

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NBA to host its first-ever combine for the Basketball Africa League

This week’s first-ever Basketball Africa League Combine is a new route for prospects to the NBA. Organized in conjunction with FIBA, the NBA has big plans for the new league.

There is now a new path to the NBA for aspiring hoopers in Africa and around the world.

The Basketball Africa League (BAL), a new 12-team league spanning the continent of Africa organized by the NBA and FIBA, is holding its first-ever combine in New York City on Dec. 4-5.

The league will begin play in 2020, but first needs to populate its teams with the best available prospects it can muster, which will in large part be drawn from the 50 hopeful participants attending the first-ever BAL combine this week.

The event, to be held at the Brooklyn Nets’ practice facility, is part of a longtime effort by the league to boost the profile of the sport globally while creating new and more closely-affiliated paths into the league for a larger network of prospective athletes.

While the NCAA has long been the preferred path for young players seeking an “in” to the world’s best basketball league, that route has increasingly been eschewed.

Instead, prospects are exploring alternate approaches, ranging from an additional year in prep school post-graduation (to satisfy existing NBA requirements to be a year removed from one’s senior year of high school), to playing professionally overseas in foreign leagues, most notably Australia’s National Basketball League.

While the BAL may not appeal to many U.S. prospects given the challenges presented by a league spanning the culturally-rich continent of Africa, it will present additional, remunerated paths the NCAA — at least for now — does not, while also opening the door for African prospects to have an easier route into the NBA.

With players like Boston Celtics big man Tacko Fall and Detroit Pistons forward Sekou Doumbouya having had a fraught path to the league only their perseverance and good luck made happen, such an alternative is wise for multiple reasons, the most immanent being not making others tread such a precarious route in the first place.

But besides the injection of talent, such prospects developing in the BAL could provide the NBA, it’s also redirecting players who might otherwise end up playing another sport — both Fall and Doumbouya were soccer neophytes before shifting to basketball, for example — while also helping generate local interest in the sport.

It will still be many months before the inaugural tip-off of this new league takes shape, but when it does, it will be one of the biggest moves yet of the NBA into the worldwide sports market in history.

And it may just spark a seismic shift in how rookies find their way into the NBA as well.

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NBA launches Basketball Africa League, first combine at Nets’ facilities

The NBA and FIBA are poised to launch the Basketball Africa League in 2020, and are holding the new league’s inaugural combine at the Brooklyn Nets’ practice facilities this week.

The Brooklyn Nets have long been one of the league’s more internationally-oriented franchises.

With their foreign majority owners over the last decade (first Mikhail Prokhorov of Russia and now Joseph Tsai of Taiwan), the team has helped raise the league’s international profile for over a decade.

Now, Tsai’s Nets have contributed to yet a new wrinkle in the expanding scope of the NBA’s overseas interests.

Over the last few years, the NBA has aggressively stepped up longtime efforts to boost the sport and league abroad.

Most recently, it began to lay the groundwork for an international basketball league spanning the continent of Africa in conjunction with FIBA, even recruiting notable basketball fan Barack Obama to the cause.

The league, the Basketball Africa League (BAL), is to feature a dozen teams and begin play in March of 2020. But first, the league will need players, which is where the Nets come in.

On Dec. 2, the NBA announced it will hold the first-ever BAL Combine at the Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) Training Center – the Nets’ official practice facility – in Brooklyn, New York on Dec. 4 and 5.

The Combine will feature 50 players from Africa and around the world for the 12 teams to scout, using 5-on-5 games, positional skill development and a variety of testing methods to inform front office staff of the novel league’s teams as they seek to assemble competitive rosters.

Former Nets interim and assistant coach P.J. Carlesimo will serve as camp director for the Combine, deepening the team’s ties to the event.

Carlesimo, who also served as an assistant for the 1992 Olympic “Dream Team”, will work with a number of former and current NBA, G League, NCAA, FIBA and other league coaches and staff while conducting the event.

Some of the more notable names connected to the Combine include Hall of Fame big man Dikembe Mutombo, NBA Champion coach Paul Westhead, and two-time All-Star Luol Deng, among several others.

“Our goal is to establish the Basketball Africa League as a destination for top players with U.S. college, G League and international experience,” said BAL President Amadou Gallo Fall (via the NBA).

“Our first BAL Combine will provide teams with the opportunity to evaluate a deeper pool of talent as they fortify their rosters ahead of our first season, which tips off in four months.”

It’s tantalizing to think how the BAL might help transform the landscape of not only the path to the NBA itself in ways we are just beginning to take hold in places like Australia’s NBL, but even the sport’s growth as a whole around the world starting in Brooklyn.

But with the NBA’s growing international popularity, such potential seismic shifts in basketball were likely only a matter of time, making one of the United States’ most historically diverse culture melting pots an ideal springboard for the next phase of the sport.