J. Cole's viral run at an NBA pro-am is one of those clips basketball fans never quite get tired of rewinding — a rapper draining corner threes and slinging a behind-the-back pass in a gym full of pros. In a new sit-down with Carmelo Anthony, both men filled in the backstory the clip never told.
Melo said Cole did not arrive at those runs on the back of his music. He arrived because a trainer refused to stop vouching for him.
"Rick would always tell me, 'Cole working out. He really serious about this,' " Anthony recalled. "I'm like, 'Yo, bring to the runs.' He like, 'Yo, I'm going to bring Cole. We going to let him run because it's part of part of the workout.' And that's how he got on the team. So when he played, I'm like, 'Yo, Brick, what he do?' And Brick was like, 'Yo, he going to knock a corner three down.' "
That prediction became the defining moment of the clip. Cole caught the ball in the corner, didn't think, and let it fly. On his end, the rapper said the stretch around that video was the closest he ever came to feeling like a real shooter.
"From this video on to about the next year, year and a half, I touched what it feels like to have an elite shot, like no," Cole said. "And it's 'cuz I was putting in that work every single day. With that said, even through my nerves, when it came time to like slide to the corner and somebody found me, I'm knocking that down. And I'm like, 'Oh, I'm cashing.' I cashed a few."
He also pointed at the exact highlight that lit the internet on fire — a behind-the-back pass.
"The biggest thing from that day that went viral was the behind the back," Cole said. "Somebody was open. If you watch the video, you hear somebody like right here behind the back right here. Like, n shot from deep boom. That was like a highlight."
The moment captures something specific about NBA culture: the best pro runs are never only about pro players. They're about the handful of outsiders — trainers, coaches, the occasional rapper — who earn their way into a gym by doing the work. Cole's credentials were not his catalogue. They were the reps Rick had watched him put in.
For Melo, the detail matters. Plenty of people want the access. Very few actually want the grind that lets them keep it.
"He got on the team," Melo said again, like a man still mildly amused by the whole thing.
Cole, for his part, kept returning to the same quiet pride — not in the clip, but in the shot.
"I cashed a few," he said.
Years later, that's still the sentence a rapper says when he briefly lived the basketball life at its highest level.
