Noah Lyles made headlines last year after becoming a world athletics champion, but even more so because he questioned the NBA’s use of the term ‘world champion’ to refer to the league’s season champions.
This year, the track-and-field star raised his stock after winning the gold medal in the men’s 100-meter race at the Paris Olympics, but ESPN’s Tim MacMahon thinks it’s still because of what he said last year.
MacMahon praised Lyles for increasing his social media presence with all the buzz he created last year. However, he dismissed the runner’s “world champions” rant, calling it “silly semantics.”
“We’re arguing silly semantics here. (Boston) is the best team in the world. (NBA) is the best league in the world with players [from] around the world. World champions, who cares? But what it is is silly semantics and phenomenal marketing by Noah Lyles,” MacMahon said.
“Because as great as he is, nobody really knew who he was outside the track world until he said this stuff. He talks a good game, and like I said, he absolutely backs it up,” the sportswriter added.
Lyles won the gold with a personal best time of 9.784 seconds, beating silver medalist Kishane Thompson by a mere five-thousandth of a second.
Noah Lyles’ ‘world champion of what’ remark might start a FIBA-NBA tournament
Noah Lyles rubbed NBA players and fans alike the wrong way with his rant last year. He called out the NBA for using the term ‘world champion’ to refer to the winningest team in a basketball league situated only in the United States.
“World champions of what? The United States? Don’t get me wrong. I love the U.S. at times, but that ain’t the world,” said Lyles in his rant heard all around the world—or at least the whole of America.
That remark, however, might have helped create a potential collaboration. NBA commissioner Adam Silver recently opened up about building a crossover league in partnership with FIBA, featuring teams from around the world.
“I continue to believe there’s enormous opportunity here,” Silver said earlier this week in Paris (h/t Associated Press). “It’s not something where we’ll transform a league structure in the short term. But I think that there’s an appetite among our team owners for additional investment in global basketball.”
“We have a huge initiative in China. We have a huge initiative in Africa. Given the quality of the basketball here in Europe, it would seem to make sense that we should be doing something here as well,” the commissioner added.
It would be a big deal if the NBA and FIBA agreed to create this global basketball league. This what-if could give even the most minor teams—no matter which continent they’re from—the platform to make themselves known to the rest of the world.
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