J. Cole’s first three games in the Basketball Africa League suiting up for the Rwanda Patriots have drawn mixed reviews. While the attention and publicity he’s brought can be viewed as a positive, fellow BAL baller and AS Sale guard Terrell Stoglin believes Cole playing in the league is “disrespectful,” and suggested he stole a roster spot from someone who was more deserving.
“I think there’s a negative and a positive [to J. Cole’s presence],” Stoglin — a former Maryland standout — said to ESPN. “The negative part of it is: I think he took someone’s job that deserves it. I live in a basketball world. I don’t live in a fan world. I know a lot of guys that had their careers stopped by COVID and they’re still home working out and training for an opportunity like this.”
Stoglin has held his own in the BAL. He notched the league’s first 40 point game in a comeback win over AS Police and averages over 30 points per game as one of the BAL’s leading scorers.
“For a guy who has so much money and has another career to just come here and average, like, one point a game and still get glorified is very disrespectful to the game,” he continued. “It’s disrespectful to the ones who sacrificed their whole lives for this.”
One person who is defending giving J. Cole a chance is Patriots COO Haydee Ndayishimiye. She claims bringing the superstar MC on board was a basketball decision and he’s not receiving any preferential treatment.
“Of course, someone as famous as him will bring a lot of attention, but one thing the BAL, Patriots BBC and his team have committed to do is to treat him like any other player,” she responded. “He’s a great basketball player and wants to play the game like everyone else. We understand some other teams may feel this way [as Stoglin does], but we made a basketball decision first.”
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J. Cole has five points in three games and has played limited minutes on the floor. The Rwanda Patriots hold a 2-1 record and it remains to be seen if Cole plans to play in any games going forward with the group stage wrapping up.
it’s a 6 game contract relax hater
He’s not a hater, he’s right.
real question is how much is Rwanda paying him . Just like Qatar they like to throw money around so people forget what´s been going on in the country
Ummm… except for the fact that the Patriots aren’t funded by Rwanda. And even if they were, Rwanda has no reason to throw money around in order for people to not pay attention to human rights abuses. Rwanda is actually doing really well.
This title for the article is dumb as fuck .. I truly believe people that use the term hater do not even know the context in which to use it ..
He’s a scrub. Rappers don’t know how to ball.
The COO just played herself. If she at least admitted it was to draw attention to the team and the league as a whole, I don’t think many people would be mad. To claim it is a basketball decision is laughable. The only rappers who can ball are Dave East and The Game. Everyone else is pretending. And there’s nothing wrong with generating revenue this way, the White Sox organization did it with MJ. But at least he was an elite athlete who was training every day for the past 10-15 years (including college). This is just some dude with dreads who is good at rhyming words.
didn’t cole get a basketball scholarship though? Just because he can’t ball at the level of other semi pro’s doesn’t mean he can’t ball.
J Cole tried out for the St John’s basketball team. He made it to the second round of try-outs, but then he got scared and quit before the tryouts ended.
I’m getting this from Cole’s appearance on Durant’s podcast.
The same can be said about the 200.000 rappers that started out as influencers or soccer players or whatever the fuck they were before picking up the mic. Taking the spots of hard working mc’s admiring the craft.
Shades of Master P trying to shoot hops. I get it, they wanna prove they got it in them. But dude is right, stick to rapping and let someone else who doesnt rap get a spot.
Have any of u seen these games??? None of these guys are stepping foot in the league. This is Div 2 level ball, instead of hating he should thank Cole for the media exposure, no one gives af about BAL.