The beef between Noah Lyles and the NBA is getting even deeper.
Some comments that the U.S. sprinting star Lyles made in an interview with TIME Magazine back in June resurfaced this weekend upon the conclusion of the Paris Olympics. The TIME feature, written by Sean Gregory, shared a story about how Lyles was unhappy about being invited by Adidas to a shoe-release event last year for Minnesota Timberwolves star Anthony Edwards (both men are Adidas athletes). Lyles felt he was deserving of a signature shoe as well and took a swipe at Edwards in the TIME interview.
“You want to do what?” Lyles was quoted as saying. “You want to invite me to [an event for] a man who has not even been to an NBA Finals? In a sport that you don’t even care about? And you’re giving him a shoe?
“No disrespect, the man is an amazing athlete,” added Lyles of Edwards. “He is having a heck of a year. I love that they saw the insight to give him a shoe, because they saw that he was going to be big. All I’m asking is, ‘How could you not see that for me?’”
Lyles’ shady remarks about Edwards quickly made the rounds online on Sunday. One prominent NBA name who reacted was New York Knicks star Jalen Brunson. As a way of expressing his disbelief about Lyles’ comments, Brunson wrote, “Damn I thought this was Centel” (NBACentral is a popular basketball aggregator on X while NBACentel is its fictional parody page that passes along false information).
Damn I thought this was Centel https://t.co/jgTuPK0JIH
— Jalen Brunson (@jalenbrunson1) August 11, 2024
Gregory noted in the original interview that Lyles was in the middle of negotiating a contract extension with Adidas at the time that they invited him to Edwards’ shoe-release event. The two sides have since agreed to a new deal that stands as Adidas’ most lucrative track-and-field contract in the post-Usain Bolt era, Gregory added.
Lyles, who won gold in the men’s 100m race at the Olympics this year, has a history of tension with NBA athletes. Around this time last year, Lyles irked several NBA stars by publicly taking issue with the term “world champions” being used to describe the winner of the NBA Finals. Those comments were not forgotten in the basketball world, and Team USA even got in a shot at Lyles earlier this weekend after winning an Olympic gold of their own.
A six-time world champion in sprinting himself, Lyles is right that Edwards has yet to reach the mountaintop in his own league. But Edwards, still only 23, is an up-and-coming face of the NBA who is already far more marketable than any track-and-field star today. But don’t try to convince Lyles of that as there is clearly a strong mutual dislike between him and the NBA fraternity.
