After months of facing backlash for his comments on the NBA Champions wrongly getting the tag of ‘World Champions’, Noah Lyles has finally started speaking out. When Team USA won the gold medal at the Paris Olympics, people started taking shots at Lyles, especially after he missed the mark in the men’s 200m category.
Advertisement
Recently, the Men’s 100m gold medalist sat down with Shannon Sharpe and Chad ‘Ocho’ Johnson on Nightcap where he talked about the raging issue. Lyles stated that he didn’t mean to disrespect the NBA athletes with his comment. He also brought up the lack of respect that’s reserved for gold medalists in the country to further explain his point.
Unc started the segment by saying that it has been a tradition in America to address the NBA, NFL, and MLB Champions as ‘World Champs’ because the best players in the world play in America. So American Champions are also, in turn, declared the World Champions.
However, Lyles feels that there’s an important distinction between being the best and being the World Champion. Because World Championships can’t be won on technicalities. He also explained why he brought up the topic in the first place.
Lyles underlined the lack of respect that was shown to his gold medal win for USA this year. He said, “When Tebogo [Letsile Tebogo] won, he went back to a stadium filled with 30,000 people, celebrating that. When I showed up back home, on my flight…there was no 30,000 people, there was no Limo driver…there was no bus waiting.”
The 27-year-old believes that real world champions should be celebrated by America instead of National Champions getting the title of ‘World Champions’. However, Shannon Sharpe contested this claim pointing out that the best International players, like Luka Doncic and Nikola Jokic also play in the NBA.
So the NBA Champion team is certainly better than any other team on the planet because the NBA simply has the best talents in the world.
Gilbert Arenas believes that Noah Lyles’ entitlement made him the villain
After Lyles made the “World Champion of what?” comment about NBA athletes, he was hated across the country. However, what he witnessed during his Paris Olympics run was something out of the ordinary because it seemed like majority of the country was rooting for him to lose so that they can throw his comment back on his face.
Gilbert Arenas, on a recent episode of Gil’s Arena, said that Lyles’ entitlement over the World Championship title made him an enemy of the country. He said, “In USA, the only person we didn’t like in the last 30 something years, that was representing us…Like, man I hope he lose so we can rub it in his face. We’ve never ever heard nobody talk about any other athlete like that.”
After Lyles missed his shot at the gold in the 200m and had to settle for a bronze, people celebrated the fact that he lost. People were so blinded by their anger for him that they overlooked the gold medal that he won in 100m.
