After winning three gold medals at last year's world championships, Noah Lyles held the title of world champion.
After doing so, he suggested that NBA players had no right to call themselves world champions for winning the NBA Finals.
“I have to watch the NBA Finals and they have the world champion in their head. World champion of what?” Lyles said at that time. “America? Don't get me wrong. Sometimes I love America, but that's not the world. That's not the world.
“We are the world. We have almost every country here fighting, thriving, putting up their flag to show that they are represented. There are no flags in the NBA. We have to do more. We have to be presented to the world.”
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Noah Lyles of the United States competes in the men's 60 meter race at the Glasgow 2024 World Indoor Athletics Championships at the Emirates Arena on March 1, 2024, in Glasgow, Scotland. (Michael Steele/Getty Images)
Almost immediately, NBA players responded. Kevin Durant said that “someone” needed to “help this brother,” while Utah Jazz forward Juan Toscano-Anderson noted that “the NBA was the best competition in the WORLD.”
Others supported Lyles, such as Giannis Antetokounmpo and CJ McCollum, but the opposition was strong.
“When I first saw the comment, I was at the club celebrating three gold medals. We were hanging out, all of a sudden my phone blows up and my son is like, 'You have to tell KD to shut up.'” Lyles said in a recent interview with Fox News.
“I'm looking at my phone like, 'What are you talking about?' He wakes up the next day, still talking about it. Night comes, Drake is talking about it. I don't know what Drake is doing here, but, 'Wow, this is getting somewhere.'”
Gold medalist Noah Lyles of the USA reacts after winning the men's 100 meters final during the Budapest 2023 World Athletics Championships at the National Athletics Center on August 20, 2023, in Budapest, Hungary. (David Ramos/Getty Images)
US TRACK STAR NOAH LYLES SAYS REPRESENTING THE COUNTRY AT THE OLYMPICS IS 'BITTERSWEET'
Lyles mentioned that Stephen A. Smith called him an “idiot,” but he apologized. He also noted that he feels that most of the backlash has come from within the United States.
“It's America against the world. And anyone who has lived or is outside the United States agrees with my comments. Most people in the United States disagree,” he says.
Lyles said he was surprised by the reaction he received, but “mostly because I've said that comment so many times.”
“This was the moment it really came into its own, which was never the real goal,” he said. “The question was to talk about how the sport sees us in America and how that feels. So talking about it sucks, all of that. Then all of a sudden, example becomes the main thing.”
Noah Lyles of the USA celebrates anchoring his team to gold in the men's 4×100 meter relay final during the World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Hungary, on August 26, 2023. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)
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McCollum's verdict was that the Olympics were “definitely a 'world championship'. 100%. Because it's in every country.”
Lyles will fight for four “world championships” in Paris this summer.
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