Even though he finally fulfilled his dream of playing basketball professionally earlier this year with the Basketball Africa League, J. Cole has still been keeping up his skills practice. He recently worked out with NBA trainer Phil Handy and the Lakers’ Talen Horton-Tucker, and it looks like he’s still playing pickup ball pretty regularly. At a recent run with even more NBA trainers, he picked up a teammate who knows a little bit about playing with pros: Carmelo Anthony.
Footage from the session was posted to social media depicting Cole and Melo teaming up at a run that also featured the Houston Rockets’ Kevin Porter Jr. Cole appears to be keeping up, sinking a pull-up jumper in transition and feeding Melo for an easy top-of-the-key, catch-and-shoot three. Of course, Melo’s highlights dominate the clip as he pours in bucket after bucket from seemingly everywhere on the floor.
CARMELO and J COLE really the dream team for me 🤩 @carmeloanthony @JColeNC
(via @Cbrickley603, @kharrington1313) pic.twitter.com/VP7dpD3bkQ
— Overtime (@overtime) July 16, 2021
https://twitter.com/HoustonRockets/status/1415811862751498245
Judging from the fact that Cole has been popping up with NBA trainers, it doesn’t look like he totally satisfied just with playing overseas. He’s certainly received some positive feedback from many of the players he played with for Rwanda, although he received his share of criticism too. Whether he’s still pursuing the NBA or just working on improving his skills, the work ethic he spoke about leading into the release of his new album The Off-Season looks to be intact as he prepares to go on tour with 21 Savage and Morray to promote the new project.
