After winning an Olympic gold medal by the nearest of margins in the 100-meter dash on Sunday, American sprinter Noah Lyles previous comments mocking the NBA resurfaced.
Lyles made his remarks about the NBA last August while competing at the World Championships in Hungary, where he won three gold medals.
The 27-year-old runner mocked the league for calling their annual title-winners ‘world champions’, despite only competing against teams in the United States, and one from Canada.
NBA fans originally despised Lyles for his statements, but after Lyles Olympic triumph, some have come around to agree with the sprinter.
‘The thing that hurts me the most is I have to watch the NBA Finals and they have world champion on they head,’ Lyles said. ‘World champion of what? The United States?’
Noah Lyles won his first Olympic gold in the 100-meter dash on Sunday in Paris
Lyles comments about the NBA not truly being ‘world champions’ resurfaced after win
‘Don’t get me wrong, I love the US, at times, but that ain’t the world,’ Lyles continued. ‘That is not the world. We are the world. We have almost every country out here fighting, thriving, putting on they flag to show that they are represented. There ain’t no flags in the NBA.’
NBA teams compete for a city or a state, like the Los Angeles Lakers or Utah Jazz. Some teams have jersey colors that resemble their city’s flag, like the New York Knicks.
Yet, Lyles took the NBA’s claim of calling the winners of the Larry O’Brien Trophy ‘world champions.’
‘The cojones of this guy calling out NBA stars for pretending to be world champions – when they’re not! – then beating the world to be Olympic 100m champion – are gigantic,’ British broadcaster Piers Morgan said, who was best known in the United States for his stint as a judge on ‘America’s Got Talent’.
‘Congrats @LylesNoah – you talked the talked and just walked the walk,’ Morgan continued with several hand-clap emojis.
The NBA is not the only American sports league to use the moniker, with the NFL and MLB also calling each season’s victor a world champion.
The MLB has one team not based in America, while none of the NFL’s 32 franchise reside outside the United States.
‘Noah Lyles had all of NBA Twitter hate watching him because of an objectively correct statement and pulled it off,’ one fan said on social media.
‘NBA Twitter tuned in for a Noah Lyles hate watch and came up empty handed let’s freaking gooooo,’ another person said on X.
Lyles’ attention will now turn to the 200-meter dash, where he is the reigning world champion.
