Last month, the 26-year-old American Sprinter won the 100m, 200m, and 4x100m relay titles at the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Hungary, equaling the feats of none other than Usain Bolt.
However, rather than going viral for his victories, the newest sprint king was lambasted by the entire world for his post-meet trash talk that was directed at the NBA.
“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,” Lyles said. “World champion of what? The United States?”
The NBA stars were quick to comment on his statement and mock him in return.
This sparked an immediate response from numerous NBA players, such as Kevin Durant and Draymond Green, as well as P.J. Tucker. Even renowned rapper Drake weighed in on the matter, noting that “now the entire league doesn’t rate you.”
Lyles unfazed
“He thought this speech was gonna be so hard in the mirror the night before…now the whole league doesn’t rate u”, Drake commented.
Despite the backlash he received, Lyles went on about his business, continued to dominate the races in the Zurich leg of the Diamond League, and never said anything about the issue.
However, in a recent interview with GQ Sports, Lyles broke his silence when he was asked about the incident.
“A lot of air balls [laughs]. It’s just a situation where they finally decided to listen. I’ve been saying—the whole world, truly, has been saying that for years. It’s just this time they paid attention, and had an opinion.”, Lyles answered.
“To be honest, I truly think the NBA is the best. That was never the doubt. But, there is a level of not understanding the two sides of sports. There’s the national side and there’s the world side, and you can’t have the world championship title without facing the rest of the world.”
Lyles’ has laid out the challenge for critics with his recent statement on the issue.
There is no doubt that the National Basketball Association (NBA) is the premier professional basketball competition in the world and that there are currently more than 100 foreign-born players on NBA teams. But, as far as Lyles is concerned, they are still not playing in an international competition. And, according to him, they truly can’t have the “world championship title” without playing against other teams from other countries.
Nevertheless, Lyles has expressed his love for the NBA, calling them “the best” and saying that there was never a doubt when it came to this.
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The photo above is from a YouTube screen grab