Noah Lyles on LeBron James-led Olympic Dream Team: 'They gotta win'

Noah Lyles has revealed his standard for the U.S. Olympic men’s basketball team in Paris.

With an Olympics roster led by LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant and Anthony Davis, many have labeled this year’ U.S. team the second coming of “The Dream Team.” 

But after Lyles sparked a worldwide debate over the validity of the NBA champions declaring themselves “world champions” last August, the American sprinter isn’t so quick to give the team that label yet. 

“They gotta win, so we'll see,” Lyles told The Sporting Tribune earlier this month at the USATF NYC Grand Prix .

Lyles's original comments sparked the World-Champion debate in a press conference last August after sweeping the gold medals in the 100, 200 and 4×100-meter dash races at last year's World Athletics Championships in Antwerp Belgium. 

“You know what hurts me the most is that I have to watch the NBA Finals and they have ‘world champion’ on their head," he said then. "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. That is not the world. We are the world. We have almost every country out here fighting, thriving, putting on their flag to show that they are represented. There ain’t no flags in the NBA. We gotta do more. We gotta be presented to the world.”

The comments drew plenty of immediate reaction from NBA players, including members of the current U.S. men’s team going into Paris. Durant’s said via an Instagram comment: “Somebody help this brother.” Devin Booker commented on that same post with an emoji of face palm.

Some of Lyles’ U.S. track and field teammates pitched in their own points in the conversation that week. Hurdler Rai Benjamin, who owns the world’s second-fastest 400-meter hurdles time, wrote “NBA triggered dawg,” in a post on X (formerly Twitter). Fellow sprinter Fred Kerley made two posts on X that same day, one read “National basketball association,” the other read “World championships.” 

Lyles previously told The Sporting Tribune's Jackson Thompson that the intention behind the comments was to bring mainstream conversation to track and field as a sport. Lyles said international NBA stars reached out to him to express support for his comments, and that he wanted to be an NBA player when he was younger. Lyles said he quit basketball and switched to track and field so he wouldn't be held back by teammates. 

Now, Lyles is going into Paris 2024 with just as much ambition as this year’s U.S. men’s basketball team. He previously said he hopes to break Usain Bolt’s 19.19 world record in the 200m, and will be looking for his first Olympic gold medal in Paris.

Meanwhile, this year’s men’s basketball team, which could be the last for James and his Lakers teammate Anthony Davis, will have a high bar to live up to the preeminent “Dream Team” comparisons. The original “Dream Team,” which won gold in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics led by Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan, went a perfect 8-0, winning every game by an average of 44 points. 

Lyles’ challenge to this year’s team to “win” could prove to be a much tougher task though. The rest of the world has proven to gain parity to the U.S., seen in the most recent Olympics in Tokyo in 2021, when the Durant-led squad came back from early struggles to clinch a gold medal after stirring doubt among fans. It was even more evident in the 2023 FIBA World Cup when the U.S. lost in the semifinals to a Dennis Schroeder-led Germany team.

The James-led squad will face international competition that includes fellow NBA stars Luka Doncic representing Slovenia, Giannis Antetokounmpo with Greece and Nikola Jokic helping Serbia.