Team USA men’s basketball won their fifth consecutive gold medal.
The American men’s hoops team won their fifth consecutive gold medal and one of the first things on USA Basketball’s mind appeared to be a return jab at sprinter Noah Lyles’ past comments.
The 100-meter gold medalist famously said a year ago that being NBA Champions doesn’t mean you are “world champions.”
And Team USA made sure they called themselves “World Champions” in a post from their official account on X after holding off France for an Olympic championship on Saturday — even if technically, Lyles’ original point — while delivered with little regard — wasn’t wrong.
“I have to watch the NBA Finals and they have world champion on their heads,” Lyles said last August, according to the Daily Mail. “World champion of what? The United States? Don’t get me wrong. I love the U.S. at times. But that ain’t the world.”
“We are the world. We have almost every country out here fighting and thriving and putting on a flag to show that they are represented. There ain’t no flags in the NBA,” he added.
Team USA won the FIBA World Championships in 2010 and 2014 but fell to a seventh-place finish in 2019 and was just fourth in 2023 after being the odds-on favorites.
