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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.
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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.
Team USA also triumphed in the women’s tournament, edging past hosts France 67-66 to claim gold once again on Sunday.
Lyles himself had an eventful Olympics.
What did Noah Lyles say?
Noah Lyles took aim at NBA players calling themselves world champions last summer.
He said: “You know the thing that hurts me the most is that I have to watch the NBA Finals and they have ‘world champion’ on their head.
“World champion of what? The United States?
“Don’t get me wrong, I love the US at times, but that ain’t the world…We are the world.”
The charismatic athlete won gold in the 100m by the narrowest of margins.
He then claimed bronze in the 200m despite competing with Covid.
Having since recovered from his illness, Lyles partied at a Paris club on Sunday evening.
Two days after missing the 4x100m final due to illness, he was back on his feet to take to the dance floor.
Lyles was one of several athletes to enjoy themselves at the club L’Arc Paris.
The likes of Simone Biles and Leon Marchand were also spotted at the gathering – as well as Team USA basketball star Derrick White.
