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The US Sun
Noah Lyles clarifies ‘world champions of what?’ remark after USA basketball team deliver gold and aim shot at sprinter
By Etienne Fermie,
12 hours ago
NOAH Lyles has broken his silence on Team USA’s gold medal basketball triumphs over the weekend.
The 100m Olympic champion, 24, has been involved in a war of words with NBA stars since his controversial “world champions of what?” remark last summer.
Noah Lyles had his say on Team USA’s basketball triumphs AP LeBron James and Co beat France in Saturday’s gold medal game Getty
After winning gold medals in the 100m and 200m events at the World Athletics Championships in Hungary, Lyles took aim at NBA Championship winners calling themselves world champions, pointing out that the league is only contested by teams from the United States and Canada.
At the time, a host of NBA players pushed back at Lyles’ comments.
Following Team USA ‘s men’s basketball squad beating France to win Olympic gold medals on Saturday, their official X account took a cheeky dig at Lyles.
Alongside a picture of the 12-man roster celebrating, it asked: “Are we the World Champs now?”
Addressing the matter for the first time since Team USA’s win, Lyles said: “It’s not a thing of if I consider or not, it’s… they are.
“They’re Olympic champions and in the Olympics you face the whole world.
“And they saw how difficult it is, 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.”
After cruising through the group phase and routing Brazil in the last eight, Steve Kerr’s men required a huge fourth quarter comeback to narrowly defeat Serbia in the semifinals.
A 24-point performance by Steph Curry then led them past France in a competitive final on Saturday.
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