Noah Lyles Turning Heads With Latest Dig at USA Men’s Basketball Team

U.S. sprinter Noah Lyles left the 2024 Paris Olympics with a gold medal, but he also left with something else — a beef with the U.S. men’s basketball team.

After Lyles won the men’s 100 meters, a video of him resurfaced on social media from the 2023 World Championships in Budapest in which he made it known he didn’t appreciate seeing players during the NBA Finals call themselves world champion.

Days later, Lyles went viral again for his comments about not wanting to accept an invite to Anthony Edwards’ shoe release with Adidas, suggesting he should have been offered a shoe deal instead.

Now, Lyles is reveling in the fact that he feels personally responsible for making some of the players on the U.S. men’s basketball team watch him win gold in the 100m despite the bad blood between them and himself.

“They talk about me more than I talk about them,” Lyles told BuzzFeed . “I'm very happy that they came to watch [my race] because I made a tweet or a post a while ago, and I was addressing people who love me and hate me, and I said, ‘No matter what, you still watched, didn't you?’ That's the funny part, because you know, no matter how people see you, they're still going to watch whether they're there to watch you fail or watch you succeed.”

Lyles maintains the point he was originally trying to make about his world champion comments was taken out of context.

The 27-year-old doubled down on his remarks, stating the phrase should be reserved for Olympic athletes who compete with the best of the best from other countries and not players competing for league championships in professional sports.

“The point was supposed to be that the U.S. has so many people with the title of world champion or Olympic champion, and we seem to give it to others who don't actually have the title,” Lyles added. “Why do that? They're already great. They are already dignified in that, let's celebrate the other sports out there who have taken on the world and are coming back and saying, ‘Hey, we did this for you.’ We want to be celebrated just as much.”

Related: Fans Accuse U.S. Sprinter Noah Lyles of Faking COVID Diagnosis