Knicks Star Checks In On NBA, Noah Lyles Beef

New York Knicks star Jalen Brunson is the latest NBA representative to weigh in on the NBA’s apparent race against Team USA Olympic star Noah Lyles.

The rivalry between Lyles and the league’s superstars has taken another turn through comments in a resurfaced interview with Sean Gregory of Time, one where the track star apparently resented being invited to an Adidas event headlined by Minnesota Timberwolves/Team USA basketball star Anthony Edwards.

“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?” Lyles said in the Time feature. “No disrespect: the man is an amazing athlete. 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?’”

The Time story was picked up by “NBACentral” a basketball news harvesting account on X. That appears to be how Brunson caught wind of it and allowed him to offer his bewilderment.

“Damn,” Brunson said. “I thought this was Centel.”

“Centel” is one of the many parody accounts on X that spreads obviously fake stories, often for comedic effect. One recent “story,” for example, claimed that Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum “refuse(d) to leave the hotel room” at the Paris Olympics “after his mom told him he won’t be getting any minutes via FaceTime.”

Centel commented on Brunson’s bewilderment, remarking “ain’t no way” followed by a series of crying emojis.

The verbal stand-off between Lyles and the Association’s finest began last summer when Lyles, then a newly-minted champion at the Track and Field World Championships questioned the legitimacy of NBA Finals winners calling themselves “world champions.” When Team USA won a gold medal at the men’s basketball competition at the Paris Olympics, the official account asked “are we the word champs now?”

For his part, Lyles earned a gold medal in the 100m event at the Paris Games but came home third in the 200m while dealing with COVID-19.

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