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10 players to watch
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Lock In is over which means it’s time for the LCS regular season to officially kick off. No more excuses. No more Spring Split. Every game matters starting from now all the way up until the Worlds representatives are decided. Leading the way is a seemingly unfair Team Liquid lineup, but it’s not just them who made some big moves over the offseason. Here are 10 players to watch! Sometimes it’s because they’re the best player on that team. Sometimes they have the most interesting narrative. Sometimes it’s both. Sometimes it’s something else -- there are no rules!
**100 Thieves - FBI**
In real life, the FBI is [probably] a very serious government agency (shoutout to my personal FBI agent), but it feels like they’ve been reduced mostly to a meme in pop culture. Even this Google doc keeps asking me to add “the” in front of FBI -- they’re washed! A lot of OCE players were brought over to NA over the offseason because of the changes to residency, and FBI’s successes last year definitely played a huge role in elevating confidence in Oceanic talent. You could just as easily highlight Huhi if you were just looking at individual contributions to the team -- it’s not FBI alone that is the big deal but the bot lane duo together that have made huge waves in the LCS. It’s a frightening pair that Doublelift himself deemed the best bot lane in the league last summer, but what’s really exciting is that it feels like they’ve still got a lot of room to improve. Huhi was fighting with Keith at this point last year for the starting position, for example, and FBI wasn’t even Top 5 for most people let alone being in contention for Top 1. Growth eventually stops, though -- I say this as someone who has literally hit Rank 1 on the TFT ladder -- the last 20 ranks or so you have to climb to the top are just as hard if not harder to climb than getting to Rank 20 to begin with. It’s the same thing for pro players -- making the jump from good to the best is exceedingly difficult. That’s the test at hand for FBI and co this year. We already know they’re good, but do they have it in them to be the best?
**Cloud9 - Perkz**
On the flip side of that question to FBI and 100 is Perkz, someone who absolutely knows he can be the best and has proven it time and time again. His list of accomplishments -- barring a few players who literally won Worlds (Impact and CoreJJ) -- is better than most of the rest of the LCS combined. But it’s also important for us to acknowledge that his most successful years -- the last two -- had him playing mostly in bot lane. That means expectations for him are already unfairly elevated, even if mid is his natural position. And if the Lock In Tournament was a good indication of what to expect, then I think we should no longer expect him to just run over the competition in the LCS. If you covered up his name plate, you wouldn’t find too many eyebrows raised one way or the other. He played fine. It wasn’t spectacular, but it also wasn’t particularly bad. It was, however, a great indoctrination into the LCS and back into mid lane for him -- years of playing with the same people on G2 made him accustomed to things (good or bad) that aren’t going to be the same with C9. Perkz is someone who is talented enough at the game to play two different positions at the highest level, so I have full confidence in his ability to learn about those differences to fit in with a new team. It just takes time. And, well, if looking just “fine” (or bad even) still helps your team net 2nd (and very nearly 1st) in the opening tournament, then maybe, just maybe, we can hold off on hitting the panic button. *This* is what it really means to have potential.
**Counter Logic Gaming - Broxah**
It’s always “thank Mr. Broxah” from us but do we ever stop to ask who does Mr. Broxah thank? Surely not any federal agency in America right now as he’s *still* stuck in visa limbo. It is honestly kind of bewildering to me that the same thing happened to him last year -- I am hoping it’s for a different reason at the very least! But maybe there’s some sort of weird filter that picks up his name -- like, something thinks he must be a threat because his name is “Mads.” We already know that there was a bit of an adjustment period for Broxah and TL last year (to put it kindly), and with him unable to get any real practice in with CLG now, you should also expect there to be a similar adjustment period this year. CLG did not look very good in the Lock In Tournament, and even if they improve at all right now, there’s going to be a bit of a reset button as soon as Broxah arrives. Jungle is the most important role in the game right now and changing the starter here could have large ramifications on a team’s style. Cross your fingers for him, but it’s shaping up to be another bumpy start.
**Dignitas - Aphromoo**
If we made a poll for players you are surprised to still be playing in the league, Aphromoo’s name would probably be right up there. And not necessarily because people think he doesn’t belong -- after the strong resurgence he had with Johnsun last year, you definitely aren’t seeing calls to replace him. Anymore, anyway. Which is to say he’s someone who has faced calls for benching many, many times in his career, and always it is during a patch in which his team is struggling. Part of this is tied to how he plays -- he’s always been aggressive and will happily engage for his team. *Presence in the game* so to say. So I am very curious about what’s going to happen to him this year. He’s very clearly the perceived leader of this team given his reputation, and I think people are willing to be patient with him given expectations for this roster, but if they’re unable to rally, then I think you’ll start to see a lot of blame shifted his way (as seems to always happen). Support is a much more active role on the map compared to how it was in the past, which means playmakers like him should be able to shine more. Personally, I think he brings a lot of needed maturity to an inexperienced roster like this, and he’s always made his ADCs look good, so I am hoping he’ll be able to make this team competitive.
**Evil Geniuses - Impact**
If you play pickup basketball with any sort of regularity, then you’ve been to a gym where some old dude just absolutely destroys you. The second time you go, he destroys you again. And by the third or fourth time, you stop thinking of him as just “the old dude.” He’s just the guy who destroys you. At 25 years old, Impact isn’t even that old, and yet he’s more-or-less a relic in professional League of Legends. Some people who end up reading this might not even know that he won Worlds with SKT in 2013 -- I was literally there and even I barely remember it. I bring this up now because for the start of the Lock In Tournament, you could have said he was the best player in the LCS and you’d have a hard time disproving them in that moment. And going into this split, he may very well be the best (or at least the most important) player on EG. Impact has spoken in interviews about how this team gives him more freedom than TL did, and that they trust him with counterpicks and the like. He’s always been an anchor for his teams, but he’s very rarely been *the* anchor in the sense of being a carry (though not many top laners are). In recent years especially he’s been more of a weak-side tank specialist, so I’m curious to see if he’ll shift up his style and champion picks at all. Let him be the star for one. Impact: Top Never Dies.
**FlyQuest - Josedeodo**
At least in the LCS, Josededo has accomplished almost nothing of note -- FlyQuest just got slapped around by Team Liquid in the Quarterfinals. He’s only played 4 games total. And yet there is already a sort of mythos being built around him -- there are countless memes, and everyone seems happy to join in the idea. Give it a couple weeks and he’ll be one of the most popular players in the league (if he isn’t already). This fandom is not entirely in jest, though. He’s been an active player on the NA ladder for a while *and* he had an impressive showing at Worlds last year with Rainbow7 in a Play-In stage that was maybe the most impressive showing ever for smaller regions. Jungle is also becoming more of a superstar-oriented role in that we see junglers function as primary carries for teams in non-gimmick ways now. They are fed a lot of farm, and they are able to keep up with solo laners when it comes to levels. And with the role being considered the most important (some would argue by far) in the game at the meta at the moment, we should see junglers receive the same type of fanfare and recognition that mid laners and bot laners did in the past. Josedeodo is already receiving a magnified level of attention -- from LLA fans especially, but also from new fans in the LCS eager for fresh talent. He, maybe unexpectedly, has large shoes to fill this year, but doing exactly that is how he can take this early hype and turn it into stardom.
**Golden Guardians - Ablazeolive**
Here’s a name that stands out on my list of players to watch but maybe for the wrong reasons. With just a handful of games under his belt, it’s not because we’re sure he’s good or that he’s bad or average or whatever. We just don’t know. You might be able to say he was good in Academy (and he was), but how does that actually translate into the LCS? There are a couple of ways to look at this. The optimistic way is that scouts and analysts alike have an inherent bias against NA talent -- in mid lane especially -- so the standard a player like Ablazeolive might need to meet is higher. You’d say he’s been good this whole time but people just haven’t given him a chance. The pessimistic way, though, is you tell yourself teams have shown they’re willing to drop players like pennies if it meant they could win. There is no real “loyalty” from orgs, which means if Ablazeolive was someone that would have helped teams win in the LCS, then he would have found his chance already. So now is his first real chance to prove that he belongs in the LCS -- we’ll see whether the optimistic take or the pessimistic one is more true. As is the case for almost everyone on the Golden Guardians. It’s been a while since we’ve had this much young NA talent get a shot in the LCS, and this team will come to represent the potential of the talent pool in NA -- for better or for worse.
**Immortals - Xerxe**
All I know about Xerxes is that he was the mostly-naked dude with golden jewelry who was the main “bad guy” in *300*. I assume this is where Xerxe got his name from, but I swear to you I will find out for sure before the year ends. That he’s now on Immortals, also the name of the elite warriors of the old Persian empire (which Xerxes ruled), was probably always destined to happen. It is literally a good fit for both parties. And with Lock In now done, Immortals are the most interesting lineup to watch going into the Split -- with Xerxe, Raes, *and* Destiny all finally here, this is the roster with the most potential to make a surprising splash. Xerxe’s 2020 performance (like all of OG) was underwhelming compared to expectations but he was one of the hottest names on the market before that. A change of pace in coming to NA could be the exact thing he needs to revitalize his career, and if he’s able to reach his old heights, then he may be a dark horse candidate for becoming the best jungler in NA. There are a lot of *ifs* for this to happen, though -- especially considering we still haven’t even seen this roster play. Like with Broxah and CLG, there’s an adjustment period for this team, and they may find themselves off to a sluggish start because of their delays.
**Team Liquid - Alphari**
Name’s Alpha, hold the ri. I will just own up to it: I was skeptical of this pickup not because I thought Alphari was bad but because I thought it wasn’t much of an upgrade over Impact. And while I’m still not entirely convinced he’s significantly better than Impact, I am now convinced he’s a better fit for TL, whose greatest problem was that they lacked individual proactivity and playmaking ability. Enter Alphari. With nine solo kills in the Lock In Tournament, which was good for 1st in that metric and was more than double the 2nd place person, TL now has that much-needed aggression. One major critique against them was that they were too one-dimensional with Impact -- it seemed they only found success if he was on a tank, and if that failed, then they didn’t really have much of a backup plan. The departure means Impact can go have more freedom on an EG team that may be better suited to supporting him, and it also means TL was able to land Alphari -- a bonafide carry who can be a major difference maker, by himself, on the map. This gives TL extremely strong laners in top and bot to complement Jensen, who was the best mid laner during Lock In. With options aplenty, Santorin must be salivating at the potential this team has going forward. They are clearly the team to beat right now, and unless teams are able to keep Alphari at bay, Liquid may be well on their way back to the top of the LCS.
**TSM - SwordArt**
If you watch an LPL game and then an LCS game after it, sometimes you get a little whiplash. I’m not even saying that the LPL games are necessarily better. They’re just… different. Regular season games especially feature some of the, as Ning might say, happiest games in the LPL. It is just nonstop aggression and fighting, which is not something you see much of in NA. So SwordArt, I imagine, is maybe feeling a little of that whiplash in shifting to this new environment. Maybe his team doesn’t play quite like he expects, and maybe his opponents don’t either. I get the same type of feeling watching him play as I do with Perkz, which is that I appreciate the aggressive plays they make even if it doesn’t necessarily look like they’re synced with how the rest of the team is playing. We also saw this with Jiizuke last year -- for better or, honestly, likely for worse, NA teams just play at a slower tempo. That seems to be changing a bit more this year -- even TL is pushing the tempo -- but it’s not going to be an immediate adjustment for everyone. I expect SwordArt to assert his style onto TSM given how vocal he is, which means I think there’s a lot of room for this TSM team to grow. SwordArt has managed to win at every single stage of his career when given enough time, and I have no reason to start doubting him now.
