One of my favorite moments in sports history occurred on September 14, 1990 — I was seven months old. Another decade would pass before I’d even see the clip, but just two weeks after they became the first father-son duo in Major League Baseball history, Ken Griffey Jr. and Sr. jacked back-to-back home runs for the Seattle Mariners. First senior and then junior. Another 100 years might pass before we see something like this again — a perfect demonstration of one generation of talent passing the torch to the next. But every single year, that’s exactly what happens under the currents, and if you don’t pay close enough attention, you’ll be swept up by the new tide.
League of Legends is a sport that, by most accounts, is still in its infancy. To most outsiders, it’s still part of the burgeoning craze that is esports. It’s not even a decade old — many of the major leagues around the world are just breaching their fifth year. But because seasons are split in half, it kind of feels like it’s been twice as long. There have been twice as many chances for teams to capture glory and twice as many chances for teams to fall into obscurity either through relegation or mid-season roster swaps.
We have seen legends come and go — the vast majority of the early pioneers are now retired. But it’s not just them. Players who played for just one split or one week have gone, too. Players who were on the brink of cracking the big leagues and players who never had a realistic shot to begin with. In total, 212 players have played in at least one game in the NA LCS, but only a handful have made a name for themselves.
And in the NA LCS — the ones standing at the top right now have also been around for the longest. Doublelift’s backstory will bring you to your knees — it is full of sacrifice, tribulation, loss, and, of course, triumph. Then there’s Bjergsen who is the winningest player in League history, and he stands atop the biggest esports empire in North America. But stare at their light for too long and you may miss the shadow beneath them shifting like a dancing silhouette.
With the increase in resources for Academy rosters, more and more teams have shuffled their roster in the middle of the season. During the Summer Split especially, 80% of the league made a roster pivot at one point or another (TL and TSM being the only ones to not do so). Some of it happened when the season was already lost, but it’s still a signal that what teams are looking for is the next Doublelift — a homegrown talent that will both win and earn the adoration of fans.
It’s not clear if that player is in the league yet, but this Summer Split Playoff run will offer a lot of them the opportunity to emerge from that shadow. Here are the stories of a few players that have been asked to step up to the plate — maybe a little prematurely — for their teams.
THE CLOUD9 HOUSE has multiple television monitors hooked up to computers in their living room. One of the screens features Head Coach Reapered’s World of Warcraft account idle in the character select screen. It’s become a bit of a meme within the community, but make no mistake — they are well entrenched into the Battle for Azeroth. This is the kind of culture that has always separated C9 from their peers, though — more than any other team, they’ve embraced the exact energy that draws players to the sport.
Cloud9’s origin and initial identity was simple — they were a group of friends that just liked to play League of Legends. They just happened to be very good at it. Through the years, the core of that has largely remained, but there were plenty of times where it wavered. Earlier this split, doubts about the team’s motivation were questioned. From an outsider perspective, maybe they were playing other games a little too much. But focusing exclusively on the grind? That’s never been the thing that made this team click. Like juggling their roster, what they needed again was balance.
Bobby “Blaber” Huang is the newest face to grace the C9 main roster — the rookie jungler led the league in KDA and Kill Participation in his limited appearances this split. He’s the first to make such an impact after having come directly from Scouting Grounds, though he suggests he didn’t even know if he wanted to go pro before that.
“Going to Scouting Grounds lets you understand what it would be like to be a pro — like what you would do on a daily basis,” he says. “And that’s something I really liked. Playing League eight hours a day — I thought I would hate it, but I actually liked it. That made me want to be a pro.”
In talking to him, you get the impression very quickly that Blaber is a confident person. C9 is eating a quick lunch in between scrim sets — a few of them are playing WoW while they do so, and even Blaber has caught the bug, though he says he hasn’t played it that much. He is very much a diehard League of Legends player — he accumulated 2000 ranked games in one season in his initial climb to Challenger from Gold in Season 6.
C9 has been an easy adjustment for him. He was already friends with a lot of the players on the team before joining, and he says, “It doesn’t feel like I’m a pro — it feels like I’m playing video games with my friends. I’ve never thought of it as a job.”
It helps that they’re riding an eight game winning streak. Winning is fun. And they enter playoffs as one of the favorites to take the title after dismantling top seeded Liquid a couple weeks ago. But for all the perceptions of them being a top team, C9 hasn’t won an NA LCS split in over four years. Maybe turning to memes and jokes is just part of a coping mechanism for fans, but make no mistake — right now, they should expect their team to not just win, but to dominate.
And that’s right in line with Blaber’s wishes, who describes himself as a bit of a perfectionist. He was Top 10 in the nation for badminton until he was 15 — that’s when he decided to finally take League of Legends seriously. Before that, he was at one point an 800 elo kid who played maybe once a week. He watched all the pros duke it out on the screen just like you and me. His favorite player was Doublelift.
“When I was a kid, I wanted to play on a team with Doublelift,” he says. “I’m still a fan of him, but I’m not one of those crazy fans. It’s cool — I met him, and I get to play against him, but obviously I need to beat him.”
There isn’t a guaranteed crop of rookies every year like in traditional sports. NA Solo Queue is even notorious for being a poor training ground — people don’t think the talent is there. But pluck a rock from that field, and you might just be able to polish it into something that shines. With the right infrastructure and the right people, Blaber may continue to evolve.
Scouting Grounds in its current iteration might not be perfect, but it’s still one of the most definitive chances for young players to make an impression. Seemingly gone are the days where a Solo Queue talent can truly make a name for himself on the ladder to make the immediate leap to pro play.
Blaber already experienced the end of a different life path when his badminton career came to a halt. “After I turned 14, all the kids were like 5’10 or whatever, and I was 5’5. It was kind of demoralizing,” he recalls. That doesn’t matter in League of Legends, though. There’s a different kind of height he needs to reach, and being a part of Cloud9 means he’s already starting in the air.
If they find themselves two games down at some point in the Playoffs — that’s the moment Blaber may finally feel like a pro. He will lift off his headset and briefly hear the crowd roar for the other team. This is what I tell myself will be his coming-of-age moment. Maybe his hands will rattle just slightly, and maybe his opponents will feel like they’re towering over him on the other side of the net. But I also imagine what he is telling himself is much simpler: just win and it won’t get to that point.
“THERE’S THIS MEME where [my teammates say] I’m from Australia,” laughs Echo Fox ADC Lawrence “Lost” Hui, “But I’m from New Zealand! It’s a British colony under the Queen and stuff. We’re nowhere near the manners and culture of Australia at all. But they’re like, ‘Yeah, dude. Have you seen a kangaroo? Tried [eating] crocodile?’ I don’t blame them — New Zealand’s just like you kicked Australia and a rock fell out.”
And maybe that makes Lost a pebble who was skipped all the way across the Pacific Ocean. Unlike many of the other unknown faces in the League, he’s already played at the highest level in a different region — the Oceanic Pro League. NA is famous for importing the best talent from around the globe, but the OPL isn’t exactly a powerhouse region. That makes using an import slot on Lost all the more perplexing — is he skilled enough to warrant a slot that is more traditionally given to a Korean player or a European player?
“I’m just scraping off the edges,” says Lost. “Not really ideal.” He’s talking both about FOX slipping into Playoffs and about his path to FOX. He laughs a lot when he reflects on that journey. Last year, on Legacy Esports in the OPL, he finished 2nd and 3rd in the two splits after telling himself he’d retire if he couldn’t win a championship there — OPL teams must secure first place in order to reach the international stage, and it’s only there that a player from a smaller region can make a name for themself. A good case-in-point is what happened with Levi and Vietnam last year.
“If I didn’t get picked up, I probably would have gone to University and towards some career,” he added. “Kiss my wife good night at 29 with a 55k salary and paying off expenses on my house. Something hella sad… or not sad, but not a lifestyle I’d be down to live.” I had to think about my own life for a second and just laughed — this will probably hit at least one reader right now on the nose, and I want to tell you that sounds like a great life.
But for Lost, he still harbors dreams of standing among the greatest players in the world, even if he’s super humble about it. When he received an invite to attend the Echo Fox tryouts, he was on the brink of retiring. If I’d told him a year ago that he’d be the starting ADC for FOX in the playoffs, and he’d be facing TSM, he’d have laughed me right out of his country. The amount of infrastructure and talent that NA has is incredible for him.
“In Oceania, you’re playing a pretty XD solo queue,” he says. “It doesn’t seem realistic to make this hobby a career. Telling your parents, ‘Hey I’m going to go live in Australia, play for little to no money, ditch school when I’m 18, [all] for a chance to make this realistic — by any shot of the imagination is not convincing to you or to anyone around you.’
“Oceania is like a kitten, and NA is a cat,” he continues. “They’re in the same category of hella troll but one is troll in the sense that there’s a bunch of one-tricks that either go 0-10 or 10-0. But when they do go 10-0, they show really good mastery on the champion. Or when people play whatever for fun, at least it’s Zven playing for fun. Or Febiven or whatever, you know? Players that are internationally recognized playing for fun. Their autopilot is still pretty decent. It’s better to load into the game against Doublelift or something — at the very least, you get some kind of practice. It’s better than none.”
He does miss the small town vibe that the ladder had there — there was something charming about knowing everybody. It made banter easy. But in NA, it’s just people he knows of, not anyone he actually knows. His story feels a lot like a Disney movie — a kid from a rural village hits the big city. It comes with all the tropes — displacement, trying to make friends, and ultimately, trying to prove that you do belong. He’s an import that sees very clearly all the things he can learn from this region. That’s an incredibly helpful perspective he can provide to his team if he isn’t swallowed by the pressure.
It’s been a bit of a whirlwind for him so far, though. He recalls the moment he found out he was being moved to the main roster: “I had a pretty late morning. I walked up to [Academy] scrims like five minutes late and all of my gear at my desk was just gone. I just stood there going, ‘Huh?’ I was tired out of my mind and had just sprinted back to the office with a $12 salmon bowl I bought from Bristol Farms. It was just so bad. So I walked up tired as hell, sweaty as hell, and they’re like, ‘Hey, you’re in [the main roster practice room].’ Then I see Smoothie and go, ‘Holy crap! It’s Smoothie.’
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"HONESTLY, IT DIDN’T FEEL LIKE I BELONGED AT ALL THE FIRST DAY."
“That was the first [dose] of reality. I hopped into LCS scrims with my $12 salmon bowl that was hella stinky, hella bad. They were like, ‘Dude, that smells like crap.’ I threw it away. Played scrims. Honestly, it didn’t feel like I belonged at all the first day. When you’re thrown in there like that. And personally, I didn’t feel like I deserved it much at all. Especially with the way Altec and Feng — all the players in that [roster] fiasco — I didn’t like the way that [panned out] either. It felt pretty uncomfortable for me going into it, but you come to the realization that ‘this is it.’ Even if you’re not prepared or you feel like you’re not worthy of it. You’re still going to be playing LCS on stage that weekend.”
There hasn’t exactly been a best friend or someone he can lean onto for emotional support here either. He says, “There’s no one by my side going, ‘Hey man, you got this!’” It’s a big adjustment, but Smoothie has been helping him out, and he says Altec helped him go up on stage for the first time so that he wouldn’t be shaking.
It’s not the competition that throws him off, either — he’s got a good heart, and from what I can tell he seems to spend a lot of time thinking about his teammates and how they’re feeling. Opponents are just champions to him once he loads into the game — it’s not like traditional sports where you have to size-up or see someone like Kevin Garnett staring you down. The thing that’s unnerved him the most so far is what he does see — his teammates.
“Like Dardoch and Huni — they’re intimidating, right?” he says. “So for the most part, let’s say if my jungler was a random, I’d be more persistent to be like, ‘Hey dude, gank my lane! Help a brother out!’ But it’s Dardoch, so maybe he has a better idea than mine — so I’ma let him do his thing, and I’ll do my best, because I know he’s insane. But I gotta find some kind of balance now, where sometimes it’s better for us overall to help me with that wave or to put pressure on my lane.”
Learning to communicate as an equally valuable member of the team will be the final hurdle for him. That’s a lot easier for imports from Europe or Korea who came into the region thinking of it as being lesser to begin with. They’re not intimidated by other big names because they’re supposed to be the bigger names. But Lost is different. Maybe if he can leverage that perspective, then he could wind up being one of the most successful imports ever.
Right now, he says about his team’s chances of making Worlds, “I just can’t even imagine being the guy that holds them back from something I feel like they deserve.” I think that’s a fine mindset to have — one that acknowledges the skill and sacrifice put forth by your teammates. But I’d also hope he steps back and acknowledges that if they do make Worlds, then it’s something he’ll have deserved as well.
I RING THE WRONG BELL five times before Andy “AnDa” Hoang emerges from the adjacent gate. The 100 Thieves house is one you may have seen time and again on their show “The Heist.” It’s a large house with big panels of glass windows in the front — it’d be a great backdrop for a new Ocean’s movie should these thieves want to orchestrate an actual heist. It’s an off-day for AnDa, and the first year jungler is just hoping for a relaxing day. He’s learned over his years that keeping his mental health up to par is just as important as grinding.
AnDa’s initial “claim to fame” is that he is former C9 top laner Balls’ cousin. At one point, he even made a name for himself on the challenger ladder as the other C9 Balls — he used a capitalized i in the name to appear as the same name. Both of them played top and both of them had a similar champion pool — it makes sense since Balls was AnDa’s favorite player growing up.
And he could be a bonafide veteran by this point already if he didn’t suffer a Visa setback early last year. He was slated to join the inaugural roster of FlyQuest as their jungler — alongside Balls — until the final hour when it fell through. He says, “All I remember was in our Skype chat, Hai was like, ‘Fuck you Andy (half in jest).’ When I first found out, I wasn’t that sad, but when my parents asked me about it, it became a lot more sad. They tried to help me. [They weren’t that supportive of gaming during the beginning], but during that time, they were really supportive.”
After that, he toiled around for half a year at home before signing on with Immortals as their substitute player. He was already friends with Cody Sun from their Challenger days, so it was an easy adjustment — he got to observe the rigors of professional life without actually having to play. The way subs were utilized even as recently as last year was more of an emergency precaution. It’s like how people joke about how great it would be to be Tom Brady’s backup. You just kind of chill.
But flash forward to this year and suddenly his career has taken a couple sharp turns. After an unsuccessful stunt with FlyQuest, where they struggled to put together a stable roster, he found himself in the Academy league. He insists that he actually enjoyed his time on the FLY Academy roster a lot — this is a sentiment I’ve heard from multiple people who’ve played there, but no matter how fun it was, it wasn’t his ultimate goal.
Given the chance to be transferred to 100 Thieves this split, he jumped. He explains that his ideal team would have good players and perhaps even more importantly a really good shotcaller. AnDa is a bit of a quiet person — he’s very considerate with his words and doesn’t just blurt out his thoughts like some other pros (or me). It makes a lot of sense that he’d want a strong voice to help guide him, though he also wants to learn how to be a stronger voice within his team.
When news broke of the Meteos trade for AnDa, the initial public reception was… not good to say the least. 100 Thieves made it to the Finals last split and Meteos was seen as a large part of their success — after weaving in and out of the league for the bulk of 2017, it seemed like he was finally back. He’s also one of the most popular players to have ever played in the league — juxtapose that against a quiet AnDa who no one knew anything about, and you start to understand the fans’ frustrations. Take it a step further and when you see Levi on the 100 Academy team, fans were left with neither option A or option B. They just had AnDa.
He’s not a particularly flashy player, but he’s had some standout moments such as his Poppy game against Echo Fox. The performance thus far has been, at the very least, serviceable. Yet the expectations he’ll be shouldering are immense, and the payoff of even performing well is probably not that great. When the team wins, Ssumday or Aphromoo get all the credit, and when they lose, one of the other three shoulder the blame. That’s the general trend, anyway. And junglers have historically been blamed for just about everything.
AnDa doesn’t let those things bother him too much, though. He’s focused on getting better. “At the end of every day, I write down what I learned,” he says. He uses the journal mainly to keep notes on gameplay related things, but he also uses it as a bit of an emotional outlet. And he also practices signing his name once a day — to get it right for fans who might ask for his signature.
He recalls a moment from a fan that helped validate his lifestyle. He says, “Last year on Immortals, a fan got me a cake with candles and everything for my birthday.” He wasn’t even playing then, but I think it really shows how gestures like that can outweigh a hundred negative comments on the internet.
The 100 roster has also been very receptive to him — it helps that he was already good friends with Cody Sun before joining. Besides that, though, he says, “I actually watched Ssumday’s VODs a lot when I was a top laner… and now I’m on a team with him. It’s kind of weird.” The two are generally quieter voices on the team, though, so that might come to explain why we don’t see 100 play around top more often in the early game.
Otherwise, he duos with Ryu a lot. He says, “We just flame each other a lot [while duoing]. He’s mean to me. He’ll say something mean and then say he was joking after, but I’d feel bad [for a bit]. Ryu is actually a lot more vocal than he seems because he seems like… Snorlax. And the Ryu face. [But] he’s the second most talkative after Aphromoo. He’s really helpful in comms, especially mid-late game.”
AnDa placing such great value on a good communicator probably stemmed from his early fandom for the initial C9 roster. Hai was famous for his ability to shotcall, and AnDa had a chance to see it in person. He says, “I went to stay at the Cloud9 Challenger house [after they eliminated us] and watched them scrim. I was like damn, Hai is pretty beast. Just how much talking he does — it’s like 1v9. I was pretty fascinated by that.”
Aphromoo may be the closest player left with that style of shotcalling in the league, but even he’s distanced himself from it and has repeatedly iterated how important it is for the entire team to be contributing to calls. For AnDa, that means he’ll need to figure out how to be more comfortable and confident in his voice. And he’ll need to do so while adapting to the mechanical aspects of the jungle role that are still relatively new to him — it’s not easy to successfully pull off a role swap.
But the time for him to step up is now. It’s not Academy anymore where he can just focus on improving, and it’s not the substitute life where he can just observe. It’s not enough to just be getting better. You have to be better. But instead of watching his favorite players, AnDa has a chance now to be become a spectator’s favorite player.
LATE NIGHT AFTER SCRIMS is when a lot of the bonds between players are forged. For FlyQuest, they are always memeing each other or joking around. Support Juan “JayJ” Guibert says, “Right now, a thing we say a lot is ‘angle.’ In game, if the enemy team is coming into us, we’ll say this is an ‘angle’ to fight. So now we just say angle for everything. It’ll be like midnight, and Turtle will say, ‘Is this In-N-Out angle?’ and I’ll say yeah, and we’ll go to In-N-Out.”
JayJ comes from Canada, where he spent some time playing for the University of Toronto collegiate team. There, the team enjoyed a ton of success and even traveled internationally where they won some events. He’s actually experienced more international success than pretty much anyone else in the NA LCS, so maybe he can be the light we are looking for?
The difference between the levels is pretty immense, though. Not on an individual level — he suggests mechanical differences between players aren’t massive (though they do exist). The biggest differences comes down to how teams communicate to each other and their general understanding of macro play. This is patched up the higher and higher you go in competition. This is true across all sports — the players become, on the whole, a little stronger and faster in a higher level. They understand the game better. And mistakes are punished more aggressively.
JayJ has spent time at all three levels of play. He says, “At the Collegiate level, it’s pretty much baby steps into team play. Communication, learning to team fight together. Having one shot caller can be really good because if they have all the game knowledge needed, they can tell everyone what to do. But as you go higher up, everyone needs to have higher game knowledge.”
He mentions a syncing issue with Turtle that highlights that issue — Turtle will see a play that he or someone else won’t see, but it’s not something that can be communicated before he needs to act. League of Legends requires instant movements, and if he sees something but JayJ doesn’t, that sometimes makes him look dumb when really JayJ should have seen the angle, for example.
Beyond that, the pressure is significantly different. JayJ says, “I think a lot of LCS players don’t have the love for the game that they used to. I definitely miss playing for fun. Before, I could turn my brain off [in Solo Queue] and play and no one would care.”
One indicator of the stress is that everyone I talked to echoed that it felt worse to lose than it felt good to win. They hated losing but were most ambivalent about winning. I think that’s in part because they haven’t tasted a playoff victory yet — maybe being put in a do-or-die situation will grant them that elation.
As of now, though, JayJ says losing a random game in the regular season of the NA LCS feels worse than losing the Academy Finals. That’s a pretty huge distinction — but it makes sense given that the season is only 18 games long. Every game really does matter, as we saw this split with four teams forced into a tiebreaker and OpTic becoming the first 9-9 team to ever miss playoffs.
FlyQuest enters Playoffs as a pretty heavy underdog, and they’ll at the very least need to win against 100 to secure a chance at the Regional Qualifiers for a shot at Worlds. The good part about being underdogs, though, is you aren’t expected to do much.
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"BESIDES MYSELF, I THINK EVERYONE IS A WORLDS CALIBER PLAYER. MOST OF THE PRESSURE WE PUT ON OURSELVES."
JayJ says, “The general community doesn’t expect much of me, so that kind of relieves [some of the pressure]. But all of my teammates want to go to Worlds and do really well — even if that’s not necessarily my goal for this year, I want to be the best I can for them. Besides myself, I think everyone is a Worlds caliber player. Most of the pressure we put on ourselves.”
I don’t know for sure if that’s him lacking in confidence or if he’s just trying to be modest, but I think he’s just trying to keep perspective on his team’s situation. Making the Playoffs was something this roster wasn’t expected to do — they’ve definitely had a successful season. But that’s not why they formed this team.
JayJ, too, is still looking for that moment where it really hits him that he’s a pro. Of course being backstage can be a little surreal at times still. For example, he says TSM is a really serious team with serious energy, so it’s hard to approach them. But he has friends scattered across various teams, such as Dhokla. And he makes it a point to watch other team’s documentaries.
“Especially after we beat a team, I’ll watch,” he says. “Sometimes I feel a little bad but it’s just fun to see what every team thinks they did wrong and what they’ll do to work towards it. The one that was really sad to me was when we beat 100 Thieves in a base race. 100 seemed super down and Ssumday was tearing up. I just felt awful. I didn’t feel good about watching it like I usually do. We showed Flame and he just started laughing at Ssumday crying. He has no remorse.”
I think Playoffs will be a make-or-break point for JayJ, too — both outcomes being good. I don’t think a pro player can experience true hunger until they’ve been officially eliminated and denied a chance to participate in the ongoing competition. Everyone else on his team knows what that’s like. JayJ is accustomed to being a spectator, though. And he’s a bit of a pragmatic person if not outright pessimistic.
He says, “I’m the type of person to set my expectations low, that way if something bad happens, you’re not disappointed.” But, still, he acknowledges his teammate’s desires, and like a true support player, he’s made it his goal to be as helpful to his teammates as possible. Even if he’s a little tempered with his own expectations, that’s not something that spreads to people around him.
“What I’ve been told is I’m generally positive even if things are going downhill. Not only try to keep the team positive, but try to find the solution,” he says. And, surely, throughout the course of this playoff run, FLY will find themselves in situations where things are going downhill. And they’ll need someone to step up and offer the solution. Let’s see if the solutions that led him to success in collegiate play and Academy play will transfer to the biggest stage NA has to offer.
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I LOVE CONVERSATIONS that ask who the next Jordan is, or who the next LeBron is — sometimes it gets muddled in whether or not player X or player Y is better than their predecessor, but at its core, what we are trying to identify is the player who will carry the mantle of the sport going forward. Competition is a dogpile of people struggling for supremacy. As spectators to that chaos, what we are looking for is a hero to stand atop it all.
I think the first player to carry an NA squad to a deep run at Worlds will reset the paradigm of power in the NA LCS. There’s a bit of a lull right now in terms of identifying talent — we are all a little impatient for success. But it all starts with the NA LCS Playoffs. The Summer Split Playoffs in particular is the first chance for teams to qualify for Worlds, and outside of Team Liquid, every single team features a young face. They might not feel the pressure now, but slowly, it will mount up as their team eats one loss in a series. And then two. And with their backs pinned against a wall, who among them will rise?
Kien Lam is a writer for Lolesports. You can find more awful great jokes and commentary on his Twitter.