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4 thoughts going into Lock In Finals
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On the one hand, the Lock In Tournament is pretty low stakes because it’s not part of the regular season. On the other hand, though, winning or losing Best-of-5s this early adds much more weight to people arguing about whether or not their team is better than yours. It’s like those 1st grade arguments about whose dad is stronger actually panning out, and what stakes could possibly be higher than that!? Here’s 4 thoughts going into the final weekend of the Lock In Tournament!
**1. 100 Thieves -- Unproven potential**
100 played against IMT’s Academy team over the weekend and it looked exactly like you might expect from a top-tier LCS team against an Academy team. Not much to pick apart from that series, and 100 is clearly a very good team, so I want to talk about whether or not this is Ssumday’s best team yet in NA. The first other iteration that comes to mind is the 2018 Spring Split roster with Meteos, Ryu, Cody Sun, and Aphromoo (Split MVP). I feel like we are maybe rewriting history a bit by immediately claiming this current team is his best roster (though I agree they are very good) considering the other four came from a GG team that finished 5th in the LCS last summer. Then you consider the fact that the 2018 team featured an MVP performance from Aphro… This is all to say Ssumday has had some very good teams around him in the past, and I just feel like the narrative has clouded the reality of his history in NA a little bit. The hype around this current team is centered more around what we perceive to be their potential, which is tied heavily to favorable narratives being built around them (that I have definitely contributed to). I don’t think it’s wrong by any means, but it’s important to remember none of these players have actually won anything (unless you count Huhi’s time as a mid laner). The coming Bo5 against C9 will be a big litmus test on what they’re capable of accomplishing this year.
**2. Cloud9 -- Zven peaking**
One narrative I hate is how we look at someone in esports who is in their mid 20s and tie them to being old and washed. There’s this idea that young or inexperienced players automatically have more potential than older veteran players, which is probably a holdover from how we think about sports culture. But if “potential” is a way to measure how much better a player can be in the future relative to what they are right now, then in an ever-changing game like League of Legends that constantly asks you to learn and adapt, veteran players, too, can have so much “potential.” Zven has been playing since 2014 and may be in the midst of his peak as a player when you consider how strong he’s looked on Cloud9 both last year and this year -- not to mention hitting Rank 1 on Solo Queue, which matters to me at least. I say this as someone who *has* hit Rank 1 (albeit on TFT): climbing the ladder and being at the top doesn’t automatically mean you’re the best, but if you *are* the best, then you should be able to do it. It is exciting for me to see a veteran player bounce back from a down year (his time with TSM) to find such great form again. It feels like he can be even better if this team is able to continue improving and gelling as a roster.
**3. Evil Geniuses -- Three-headed dog**
I read a comment that said EG was the “we have that at home” version of TL, which means the expectation is that they are the same type of team, which feels inaccurate to me (though I do admit it is a funny joke). Santorin mentioned in the post-match interview this weekend that EG plays the way he used to play on FLY (mid/jg centric style) and that it would be interesting for him to be on the other end of that. EG is running Svenskeren and Jiizuke in those roles, and with Santorin’s former support IgNar taking on the same role for EG now, you can start to see how it might be easy to replicate that style. Impact is extremely effective when isolated and left to play weak side (he might be the greatest weak side player in NA history), and Deftly, as a younger player, is much less likely to command too many resources (especially considering the potency of ADCs in the early game). That means IgNar is going to be free to roam, and where else but mid -- Jiizuke loves to fight, and Svenskeren loves to invade. It’s a three-headed dog that will be a more aggressive version of what FLY ran last year. To me the FLY iteration was more about controlling the map whereas EG is about blowing shit wide open. I’m excited to see how effective it is against a TL team that doesn’t have any truly exploitable lanes.
**4. Team Liquid -- Hype horse**
The flipside to Santorin’s point is that his impression from playing with TL so far is that they *aren’t* as mid/jg centric, which makes sense when you consider that TL has three extremely strong lanes to play around. With Jensen in mid, it’s not like they *can’t* play around mid, but that they don’t need to do it every game. I’m excited to see if IgNar is even allowed to roam much against CoreJJ and Tactical, who’ve been very good at killing their lane opponents so far this tournament. It’d feel mean to leave Deftly alone against them. Like 100, there’s already been a lot of talk about how this is the best roster TL has ever put together etc. etc., but let’s throw this roster up against 2020 Spring TL (before they imploded -- I am strictly talking about our perception of them *before* that happened). Jensen and CoreJJ are the two constants, and then it comes down to how much you valued Impact, Broxah, and Doublelift at the time compared to their current counterparts Alphari, Santorin, and Tactical. You’d also have to remember that TL was coming off a four-peat, so expectations were already heightened. I am not so quick to buy into the idea that this 2021 roster is *definitely* better on paper (I think it’s a close call either way you lean) than what we expected from the 2020 Spring roster -- expectations are made to be betrayed! We’ve only seen three games from this Santorin iteration so far, but to be fair, they’ve been excellent. If they’re able to clobber EG, then I will happily hop on the Liquid hype horse as well -- we’ll gallop all the way to Shanghai.
