NBA Star Admits He Wanted Noah Lyles to Lose at Paris Olympics

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There was clearly no love lost between sprinter Noah Lyles and NBA members heading into the 2024 Paris Olympics. Lyles had previously angered league members for rejecting his “Champion of the World” slogan, and now Knicks guard Josh Hart has admitted he's against his fellow American in the 2024 games.

In the last part The Roommates Show On the podcast with Jalen Brunson, Hart discussed his overall support for Team USA. “I feel like I’ve been very patriotic about a lot of these Olympics. I wanted Team USA to win the gold medal in pretty much every event,” he said.

But after Brunson pointed out that there was an understatement in his statement, Hart admitted that he wasn't particularly happy to see him win a gold medal.

“I really wanted him to lose. Goddammit, I wanted him to lose,” he said of Lyles. “I think this was the first time NBA Twitter got together and hated. I was just hating and, damn it, respect, I can't even hate anymore.”

Lyles won the gold medal in the men's 100 meters, while the USA men's basketball team also won the gold medal against France in the Olympic final.

Lyles, of course, has previously questioned why the NBA refers to the winner of the annual Finals as the World Champion when it only has teams in the United States and Canada. “World champion of what? Of the United States?” he said in a 2023 interview. “Don’t get me wrong, I love the United States sometimes, but it’s not the world.”

Lyles recently told Buzzfeed in an interview that he thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to watch NBA players watch him win gold.

“They talk about me more than I talk about them,” he said. “I’m so glad they come watch me because I did a tweet or a post a while back and I was addressing the people who love me and the people who hate me and I said, ‘No matter what, you still watched, right?’ That’s the funny part, because, you know, no matter how people see you, whether they’re there to watch you fail or whether they’re there to watch you succeed, they’re still going to watch.”

He also said his comments were taken out of context and were intended to glorify Olympic sports, which do not have as much of a following as U.S. professional sports leagues.

“I feel like it's taken on a life of its own. The NBA was just one example,” he said. “That point got lost in translation. The point was that there are so many people in the United States who have the title of World Champion or Olympic Champion, and we're giving it to people who don't actually have the title. Why are we doing that? They're already great! They're already honorable in that, let's celebrate other sports that have taken on the world and come back and said, 'Hey, we did this for you.' We want to be celebrated just as much as they are.”

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