Former BYU star Jimmer Fredette’s time playing professional basketball in China may be over.
On Friday morning, international basketball reporter Emiliano Carchia tweeted that, per Chinese journalist Jia Lei, foreign players will “likely” not be allowed to play in the Chinese Basketball Association next season.
Carchia later said, “The decision of CBA shareholders has been submitted to the General Administration of Sports for approval. If the proposal will be approved, the CBA season will start without foreigners.”
Later, Carchia retweeted a tweet from an observer in China indicating that the CBA might prioritize letting fans back into buildings, after which it may allow foreign players to play in the league.
On Friday evening, Fredette tweeted from Colorado, where he lives with his family in the offseason, “Looks like I’m open for business...” and mentioned the NBA, EuroLeague and Australia’s NBL.
Fredette, 32, played for the Shanghai Sharks in China from 2016-2019 after bouncing around the NBA for five years out of college. He then returned to the NBA for a short time, playing for the Phoenix Suns, before one season in Greece. In 2020, he returned to the Sharks.
This season, which concluded for the Sharks in April, Fredette averaged 26.8 points per game but Shanghai struggled, going just 22-30.
Earlier this month, Fredette’s wife Whitney told the Deseret News in a Q&A that the end of her husband’s playing career was in “the soon future.”