I tell you the truth: if Noah Lyles had he said what he said in the famous press conference in Budapest in which he essentially stated something that is as logical as it is banal, he would be a genius of communication: if a basketball player – he said on that occasion – wins the NBA title he cannot define himself as a “champion of the world”, although it is a very widespread practice in the United States in the three most popular and professionalized sports (in economic terms) such as baseball (which even calls its final phase the “World Series”), basketball and American football. We could add the NHL, the ice hockey league.
Based on that statement, Kevin Durant (of course if he agreed with Lyles, we should build a monument to both of them) he cocked his millionaire fingers on Twitter, and dropped an air-to-ground missile, percolating it: “someone help this brother“. From there the dam gave up, and a multitude of NBA stars released their missiles on the almost unknown – at an American level – Noah Lyles who despite himself (but more probably not) had dared to address with a simple phrase the culture, the rituals, the winning narrative of the American “self-made man”, who when he makes it, makes it because he gets to the top of the world, certainly not only to the top of Mount Rushmore in the United States of America, which is evidently too narrow for him.
An all-in on the eve of Basketball World Cup which could have cost them very dearly if the United States had won (they were non-favourites, more so, according to the bookmakers: I had actually gone to check it to see Italy given 125 to 1: the bookmakers always have a unique vision slightly more objective than us) the Cup on Sunday in Malaysia. We will never know if Noah said that sentence with the intention of creating attention for himself or if it was the simple circumstance of a random question from a random journalist (maybe he also agreed… but no, come on, I’m joking ) which created the uncontrolled hype which in turn generated the giant who, like a stone golem, wandered around the world of communication awaiting the cassation ruling of the Basketball World Cup. Which then came, and it turned into Lyles winning (with or without his consent) and the NBA Gods falling into the sewers of the final for 3rd and 4th place.
Lyles, from the all-in of that declaration to yesterday, thus cashed out 120,000 followers on Instagram alone and within 3 weeks, breaking through the wall of half a million fans loyal to him (or perhaps more curious to know what someone who has faced a billion-dollar monster does in life).
Obviously all this will in turn help narration of Team USA Basketball. Humiliated in Manila at the World Cup, first by Lithuania (which made them lose the second round) and then by Germany in the semi-final, the greats of NBA basketball will take the field in Paris – Olympic Games – to wash away the shame they have suffered with blood from the best basketball in the world. It’s the same plot as the Dream Team’s appearance on the field at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, after the defeat at the 1988 Seoul Games (since 1936 the USA had never lost a final, except for the 1980 one, where there was a boycott) and the defeat at the 1990 World Cup. The Americans were then aware that non-NBA basketball had evolved (also and above all due to the effects on the NBA’s impact on global basketball) and they could no longer field university teams.
A monstrous team, made up of Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Charles Barkley, Pat Ewing, Scottie Pippen and other NBA Hall Of Fame stars, led by Chuck Daly, took to the field slaughtering every form of life that rode the parquet. The shame had been washed away, but the myth of the Dream Team had been established, which between then and last night in Manila had lost only 12 games (with a 92% success rate, according to Flavio Tranquillo).
The good thing is that now it will be time to wash away this other shame, and the team for Paris will almost likely see many of the most acclaimed NBA stars take to the field, perhaps starting from the same LeBron Jamesalthough the tastiest would be the presence of Kevin Durant who will have to make amends for being the first to target Lyles, triggering the global (or rather, only American) trash talk towards him, but also Harden, Davies, LaMelo… and in short, the tank has plenty of players.
Many mistakenly say that Lyles’ snub and all that came from it it will bring visibility to athletics. Nothing could be more wrong: it will bring – and is bringing – visibility almost exclusively to Noah. Athletics, understood as a communication (but also organizational) system, is still in the stone age. He watches these things with an idiotic smile and limits himself to memes. However, the rotary presses are at a standstill, the forms of communication are limited to recording, celebrating, and then turning the page for the next event in a babel of events that do not seem to possess the sense of sport, but only of the search for a simulacrum of entertainment.
Lyles is three or four levels above: he sees far (along with his manager), and shoots cartridges like a sniper. Everything he does appears genuine while other champions seem false in everything they do, trying to appear empathetic with the public: being and proving cynical, as Jakob Ingebrgitsen does, certainly creates a large group of haters for him, but it certainly won’t stop him from celebrities, indeed. Those who watch and follow sports “smell” hypocrisy and distance themselves from those who flaunt it.
For Lyles, who evidently knows his way around communication, the fact of being the 3-peat, the winner of three world titles, obviously played a role. Only he had the qualifications to enter the great mechanisms of the sports press, and only after what he did. Before he was a stranger outside the world of athletics. This shows how it is certainly not something for everyone to present themselves in that way.
He even tried Fred Kerley, but the loss of “grip” in his communication after going out in the semi-finals of the World Cup is palpable and thick as molasses. In short, the impression is that there are many free hitters (the best is certainly Sha’Carri, but in other ways), in the perceived absence of a general organization that knows how to exploit their individuality and resources.
This is, unfortunately.
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2023-09-09 11:59:35
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