Noah Lyles Reveals His True Feelings About Team USA Basketball

Growing up in a society where we are well aware of how important our digital footprint is, Team USA track star Noah Lyles will have one video that follows him around for eternity.

Last August, Lyles was discussing whether or not NBA championship teams can actually be considered world champions. While we are well aware that the Boston Celtics, who won this year, or the Denver Nuggets, who won the year prior, aren't touring the world to take on champions of other leagues, there has always been an understanding that the NBA is the best of the best. So, when a team wins a title in the best basketball league in the world, many believe they have the right to claim the title.

However, Lyles, whose sport routinely pits international athletes against one another, does not share that same sentiment. He provided what has now been a triple platinum viral sound bite, explaining why this isn't the case.

“You know what hurts me the most is that I have to watch the NBA Finals, and they have ‘world champion’ on their heads," Lyles said in August 2023 about NBA champions claiming to be world champions. "World champion of what? The United States? Don’t get me wrong. I love the U.S.—at times—but that ain’t the world. That is not the world. We are the world. We have almost every country out here fighting, thriving, putting on their flag to show that they are represented. There ain’t no flags in the NBA. We gotta do more. We gotta be presented to the world.”

A sentiment that led to him being relentlessly trolled after he was taken off the track in a wheelchair following his 200m race where he had COVID, and more recently, after Team USA won gold in basketball.

Led by LeBron James, Steph Curry, and Kevin Durant, Team USA was able to beat France for a gold medal for the second straight Olympics. A victory that Lyles admitted he knew was coming.

When doing an interview with the Associated Press, Lyles not only admitted that the players on the gold medal team are now considered NBA champions but that he knew it was never in doubt that they'd win.

"And they saw how difficult it is," Lyles said regarding how challenging it was to be world champions for Team USA. "And, of course, they came out on top, and of course, I knew they would. Because we have some of the greatest athletes, but they saw you can't just slap everybody together and say, "This is a great team." You know, there was a ton of countries out there who said, 'Hey we're not lying down just because we don't play in the NBA. You know we have cohesion. We have our own way of playing the game.' And there was a lot of close calls. But again, like myself, I have confidence in the U.S. basketball team that they were going to make it all the way."

"I think they were playing Serbia a few nights ago and they were down probably like 10-15 points and my coach was like 'Oh they're in trouble now.' I said 'How close is it? It's like 15 points. Nah They're going to win.'"

He also finally acknowledged NBA players as world champions, saying that because they competed against other countries, they earned the right to that title.

"It's not a thing of if I consider or not," Lyles said when asked if he felt they were world champions. "It's...they are. They're Olympic champions and in the Olympic champions you face the whole world."

Whether or not fans will believe that Lyles was actually this confident in Team USA is a story for another day. Like the basketball team, Lyles is also a world champion following the 2024 Paris Olympics. He won gold in the 100m and was still able to bring home a bronze in the 200m despite his illness.

Related: Noah Lyles’ Blunt Response To Team USA Being World Champions In Basketball

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