Nearly 48 hours after Team USA won gold in men’s basketball with a gritty victory over France in the middle of Paris, American track phenomenon Noah Lyles broke his silence on the country’s triumph.
Lyles take on LeBron James, Steph Curry, and the rest of the Stars and Stripes winning gold comes to the forefront based on his previous comments calling NBA league-winners to be faux ‘world champions’ despite what championship banners may say.
Now that the group of dozen Americans went through exhibitions and the entire Olympics without losing, Lyles’ stance appears to have softened a bit.
‘It’s not a thing of if I consider or not,’ Lyles said. ‘It’s…they are. They’re Olympic champions and in the Olympic champions you face the whole world.’
‘And they saw how difficult it is,’ Lyles added. ‘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.”‘
Noah Lyles previously called NBA league-winners not ‘world champions’ before the Olympics
After James and his teammates won gold, Lyles gave them props for defeating other countries
‘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,”‘ Lyles continued.
‘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,’ Lyles concluded.
Lyles original comments about NBA season-winners not being ‘world champions’ was made last August in Hungary.
The American won the 100m, 200m, and 4x100m world championships in Budapest and was evidently tired of hearing the Denver Nuggets called ‘world champions’.
The only current NBA franchise outside of the United States is the Toronto Raptors, with the Memphis Grizzlies relocating from Vancouver in 2001.
Lyles himself won a gold and bronze medal in Paris while running the 200m with COVID.
