Track star Noah Lyles is ready for all the smoke from the NBA.
After winning three gold medals at the 2023 World Championships in Budapest that concluded over the weekend, the 26-year-old felt some way about other “world champions” being classified similarly to his accomplishments, leading straight to the net.
“You know what 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?” said Lyles during a news conference.
NBA Shade
Wow. If tapping in an innocent bystander was a logo, the silhouette of Jerry West for the National Basketball Association would be standing next to the opinionated track star.
“Don’t get me wrong. I love the U.S., at times — but that ain’t the world,” he continued. “That is not the world. We [track and field] 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.”
Lyles, who competes on a global level against top-tier talent in track, feels that since NBA players compete only against other players in the United States and Canada, they cannot consider themselves world champions in the same vein as his respective world titles.
Fellow American gold medalist, Sha’Carri Richardson took to Twitter to defend Lyles and agree with him on his core point, that track athletes are the true definition of world champions.
“I’m standing with Noah on this one !!,” Sha’Carri tweeted. “@LylesNoah the organization have players from different countries but do they compete against different countries. You have to go against the world in order to be a world champion!!”
As expected, NBA players had something to say about this, and none of it was good for the league’s newest troll, Noah Lyles.
The Clap Back
“Whatever… I’m smoking buddy in the 200m,” wrote Aaron Gordon from the 2023 NBA World Champion Denver Nuggets.
That was one of the more tame responses as Kevin Durant posted, “Somebody help this brother,” and Devin Booker added a face-palming emoji to sum up the general NBA sentiment to the comment.
However, former 2022 Golden State Warriors champion Juan Toscano-Anderson gave the Captian Obvious answer to Lyles’s comment in case it needed to be placed in plain sight.
“Last time I checked, the NBA was the best competition in the WORLD,” he posted.
According to World Athletics, Lyles is the world’s No. 1 ranked 200m runner and is in the top five in the 100m. While the six-time world champion is licking his chops with his recent wins, he probably won’t get a good reception courtside at any NBA game anytime soon.
