USA Basketball Appears to Troll Noah Lyles After Olympic Gold: 'World Champs Now?'

Team USA basketball seemingly took a jab at track star Noah Lyles after winning a gold medal on Saturday.

"Are we the World Champs now?" Team USA posted on X after the win over France in the gold-medal game.

The post from Team USA is a callback to August of last year when Lyles called NBA teams out for referring to themselves as "World Champions" despite playing in a league consisting of teams just from America and Canada.

"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? Don't get me wrong, I love the U.S., at times, but that ain't the world."

Lyles' comments sparked a year-long debate about whether the NBA champions can call themselves the world champions.

On one hand, the NBA consists of the best players in the world, not just the United States, making a point towards the argument of it being a world league. On the other hand, the league is different than track and field, where every year athletes from every country come together to compete to truly find out who the best in the world is.

Either way, both Team USA and Lyles can call themselves world champions after this year's Olympics. Lyles won gold in the 100-meter while the United States went unbeaten on its way to a fifth straight gold medal.