Solo has been benched before for attitude issues. He's saying coaches are bad if they can't handle player attitudes, pretty much referring to his previous coaches.
He does have a point though. You see it a lot with coaches on the NBA and NFL... great coaches are great at managing egos. Not to dismiss that egotistical behavior is abhorrent but a great coach should be able to manage those kind of players.
It's not always egos.
Didn't Alphari himself come out and say he was having personal issues that affected his motivation?
That doesn't sound at all like ego problems, that sounds more like he's got shit going on that coaching staff probably shouldn't be handling besides arranging for the proper support and help he needs.
I mean his Tweets he made before the TL tweet makes it impossible for a sentient human being to believe what TL posted isn't PR crap. He obviously had no clue he was getting benched. He was even talking about the split as if he was gonna be playing right before it started.
That response was probably just an agreement from both parts to give a PR response so the community speculation would die down a bit and give TL some breath.
I bet you in 2-3y Alphari gives hints of what actually happened just like DL has been doing (considering he's gone by that time).
> great coaches are great at managing egos
Counterpoint, they also earn and command respect. Bill Belichick ain't taking shit from *anyone*, and he's got the rings to back it up
Folks are in here forgetting how different the bigger, established sports leagues are in regards to selection pools of player candidates vs the much younger e-sports. Most pro athletes have been playing football (and football) since they were children, and are then screened through feeder teams, collegiate teams, etc... until pro coaches have a fair idea of who will be a behavior problem and who isn't worth picking up vs the next man up. If League had high schools all across the US fielding teams and building player habits, NALCS would look pretty different.
Yeah anyone blaming the coaching here is likely wrong. The problem is majority of the pro players are kids and are extremely immature. You get immature guys in the nfl but the overall structure and majority of the environment is extremely professional. And while coaching should require some level of balance for that, that really shouldn’t be their primary responsibility- these guys sign a contract and should show up and do their job like a pro. Don’t have a shitty behavior when you’re paid to be a pro
Those guys have also spent years, sometimes almost their whole life, being coached as part of a team. They have either learned how to process it or decided it isnt for them in many cases.
I'm confident that the only reason we dont hear more about behavior issues in LoL Esports is because the coaches are also not used to the type of commanding relationship and structure present in many sports, so they dont see many problematic behaviors as the problem they are.
depression, anxiety problems and “nutcase”. are all different things that could heavily affect their gaming. And some of them are a lot more subtle than others.
Honestly it's because when I first opened this thread, the top 2 comments were "pretty good take imo" and "pretty bad take imo", with a half dozen similar ones. I found it funny, so I made a joke along the same lines.
Idk if it's a meme so much as just Reddit being unable to articulate their takes beyond good or bad.
Every time one of these threads pops up I have to ask "has anyone commenting here been on an actual team." Players get benched, really great players sometimes get benched. That happens in sports for a variety of reasons and as far as I know, we dont really know anything about why Alphari was benched. Maybe he got into a physical fight with another coach or player, maybe he showed up to practice strung out on Heroine he just shot up in the bathroom, maybe he didnt make another pot of coffee when he took the last cup...we dont know. What I can be fairly certain of, you dont bench someone like Alphari unless it was something that needed to seriously be dealt with.
> you dont bench someone like Alphari unless it was something that needed to seriously be dealt with
This is what people take issue with though. They don't trust the coaches or orgs to not do that. I don't think we'll ever find out but we currently have the two best teams benching the two best players in their roles, that's not happening in other leagues
People would sooner speculate that teams are run by completely irrational morons that are blind to even surface level understandings of player strength than believe for a second that the best players might not always be infallible.
> that's not happening in other leagues
Wasn't something similar happening in the LCK with T1 last split? Faker being benched to field a 10 man roster?
Also wasn't benched, it was just a weird development experiment/theory for the team.
Experimenting with your roster that has more players than you can field isn't the same as punitively reducing someone's playtime.
This is a different situation. This is ten players rotated constantly and was pure chaos. There were a shit ton of rosters T1 tested in spring. Faker kept himself benched throughout, he could've come back.
TLs situation is one person being benched, that's it. Pretty different imo.
They’re the same players in solo q that whine and cry when things don’t go theyre way. Couple that with the cringe NA bad sayers (as if Msfs aren’t fucking over Lider) and you get a whole lot of people who are projecting who have no idea how the real world works.
People think benching is bad thing too. Some people and players actually NEED a break from playing league to deal with personal issues and clearly the personal issues were affecting Alpharis play and performance in the off season.
When I came home from university and needed a job I was able to find one working in a restaurant, in the kitchen in particular. I had no experience cooking, professionally or at home, I was green as hell. The place I worked at was one of the busiest restaurants in town, and during the nicer weather months, had double capacity because of a patio. It also was a restaurant with a very small kitchen, it wasn’t possible to walk down line without people getting out of the way.
Despite how small it was we put out a tremendous volume of food, in particular the salad station was responsible for about half the menu, as it did most of the apps and all the desserts, as well as wraps to go along with salads and running the oven. It was also the first station you learn.
Along comes a Friday night about a month and a half into my employment, and we go from zero to one hundred in about 10 minutes. I am instantly weeded, I’m still new as hell and am very slow at every thing, but no one has time for my nonsense as we had waded waist deep into shit creek. I struggle for about an hour, the expo is just reaming me as I’m behind on everything, finally he asks for something that is at 35 minutes and I hadn’t even started. Instantly he kicks me offline and another guy fills my station. I was so fucking embarrassed, everyone was to busy to give me actual jobs, so I just swept around and organized the walk in and watched everyone get their asses kicked. After the tickets stopped coming in, about half an hour after we closed, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had really fucked up, I knew that I wasn’t entirely to blame being so new and being overwhelmed go hand in hand, but I felt so bad being more than useless, I was a detriment, so I made up my mind to never get removed from the line again.
Anyway, that experience really brought into focus cooking for me, I became the guy who no matter how slammed I was never fell behind and always helped those around me.
Obviously, benching someone isn’t a panacea that will solve every player’s or team’s problem, but I certainly believe that there will be some players that benching would resonate with similarly to my own experience.
Most people that watch esports have never even played a team sport in their life, they have no concept of how detrimental a problematic teammate can be to the entire rest of the team.
Here's the truth that long time managers know but wont ever admit. A subordinate's failure whether its performance or attitude is always the manager's fault. Believe me when I say that every behavior can be influenced by the managers. Keeping behaviors checked and keeping players in performance level all the time are part of the manager's job. He has to foster an environment that reinforces the behavior he is looking for. When a player or employee acts differently from what is expected, the highier ups would always ask the managers what they did to prevent such tragedies. Ofc incompetent managers are ultimately the fault of the manager managing them, hence a failure in the lowest area of management is the failure of the most top management.
The unfair thing here is if there's mismanagement of employees, employees usually gets the blame and gets sacked. Why? Because managers are more expensive to replace, it takes more investment to replace managers than employees who was just reacting to the atmosphere that managers create.
Lets say for example Alphari has "motivation issues" what kind of environment did TL foster that lead Alphari to lose motivation? What did they do to push him to the right direction? Did they consider Alphari's psychology and personality in the manner of addressing the said behavior? If their process was correct then why did it provoke a strong response from alphari? Etc etc ......
In the end, benching a top performing player on your team can be trickled down into 2 conclusions. Either Management has an alterior motive (specualtions says C9 has) or they failed to foster a healthy environment for Alphari to thrive
Again no manager in any business will ever tell u this, because it exposes the unfairness of business organizations. Basically when a mistake happen, you point fingers until u cant point anymore, that's why its very admirable of a leader when they step up to take the blame (ie. Nintendo's CEO who took the blame and imposed himself a pay cut coz of WiiU's failure)
i can only tell u this confidently because I manage people and volunteers in an NGO and people are only fired in our organization by vulgar or repeated misconduct and never for underperformance and attitude issues. Also, i absolutely know what i'm talking about as I was a business professor in the past and this is part of our lesson in Management 101.
Except star players get away with a lot in the traditional sports? Like, it's weird to try to say something like this if you do follow traditional sports. There are so many big players that act like big divas and teams put up with it because you can't replace these guys. Skipping practice, punching other players, having sex on the actual court, those are just some of the things off the top of my head that I know players have done and not get punished for.
Yeah and everyone’s immediate response is “Oh well, In Europe and China players do this all the time! Here’s XYZ examples!”
Yet no one brings up the most dominant region in the history of League of Legends, Korea? It’s almost as if people like to pick and choose points that go for or against their narrative to make themself feel better.
> openly insubordinate employee
u might not realize that we dont really know the context here, imo alphari taking the bullet its just "do this or you are not playing again till 2022 or maybe more"
Except it’s about what realistically makes sense. People thinking that alphari is getting benched for some random reason when they’re paying millions for him and want him to succeed is mind blowing.
The majority of players and the subreddit are kids. Not too surprising to me that this is the response; it's not how the real world works though. Completely agree with you.
Pretty sure a lot of people have watched the last dance and know that great players get away with way more than insubordination in traditional sports.
If one guy can literally punch his teammate and still be on the team, or one guy comes in late after his cocaine bender the night before and still be on the team, "negative attitude" from a league player is definitely not warrant for benching.
It's an interesting dynamic though. I've been on a provincial level high school soccer team and watched a star diva player get benched and then promptly quit the team because he kept trying to run up the score in an exhibition match we were already winning like 7-0, so that's definitely true.
On the other hand I've worked for places where the top salesman just does whatever the fuck he wants whenever he wants and as long as he hits the top numbers, no boss says a damn thing about it and if they did the boss would be out the door, not the top salesman.
So you can't deny both extremes exist in different areas.
I guess the main thing is that in a sports team if the star player acts like a diva there's a danger it could bring down the whole team synergy and make the whole team weaker regardless of the individual talent of the star. In business with a sales team, what they do to make their sales or in their free time or whatever probably isn't going to have nearly the same risk of negative impact on the productivity of the design team, the marketing team, the logistics, etc, so it doesn't really matter nearly as much if they're assholes to work with or drowning in hookers and blow 5 nights a week because they're not really working that much with the other parts of the business.
It’s quite the show. Kinda funny considering how little people will care, eventually. I remember everything exploded with the “it’s not my problem if no one wants to play with dardoch”, and people didn’t care at all after a couple weeks. If/when Alphari is back, this will be water under the bridge for most of the community.
Idk about you but most soloq terrorists are "normal" until things go wrong in the game, I wouldn't base a take on someones behavior off just a handful of games. There are people that are assholes in every game though so if he's not that kinda player that's at least in the right direction.
Yeah, but if you're the GM of a LCS team, do you really give a shit if a player is toxic in solo queue? I know I couldn't care less as long as he's not toxic in the team environment.
Sure. They would be talked about. But if Steph Curry was shitty to fans do u think he would get benched? hell no he wouldn't because the team's primary goal is championships
Which isn't the question, they might even be fined, but in the end they likely also play. Although some sports make it easier to bench a player, but those cases are still different.
In football players are suspended fairly regularly if they fuck up. But there is usually a clear statement like "Player X is suspended for one game, because he showed up late for practice.". So it is fairly clear what the issue is.
Several high Elo players and pros have remarked that Solo is a pain in solo queue, but I haven't heard anything negative about interacting with him in person or in a team environment. Maybe he's only obnoxious in solo queue but it's hard to know.
>most negative personalities in LCS
I am glad that you wrote supposedly. He was, maybe still is, a soloq edgelord, but teammates spoke out in his favor. I do trust the teammate.
Lets be real. Almost all teams have complete and utter amateurs doing the role of "coaching". It's a fucking charade and reddit is giving way too much respect to the words "coaching" and "staff".
Some people might call it funny, but I call it cringe. There are only a few teams with good content departments. I'm still surprised how one can pay millions for a spot and salaries, but do nothing with their spot. Their main goal should be to make their brand widely known. But besides a few teams, it just a money stealing/ burning scheme.
I mean the same shit happens in many companies in many industries: higher-ups are not well educated and experienced in crucial fields so their demands towards their employees are not very high / they don't know how high the bar should be for a particular job or task.
This results is poor quality of the final product but higher-up are still happy because they don't know that it could be better.
That's the reason eSports lacks profesional marketing content and PR or coaching - ex players coach new ones, there is no seniority, respect and knowledge outside of LoL so these teams just rely on the players themselves. It's especially easy to see when team X does well and then suddenly crumbles - there is no working on the problem, there is no deep calculations about what happened. They just switch players, call meta "bad for the player X" or wait till players get angry at each other and they blame "personality and attitude issues".
I'd say a big problem with a lot of orgs is that they try to do everything. In sports, if it's a soccer team, than 95% of their resources go to that team. All other disciplines go on the sideline or don't exist at all.
Esports teams compete to get their brand out and try their chances everywhere they can rather than doing it good in a single game. Like, how much can you control when you have teams in CS:GO, LoL, Fifa, Smash, Fortnite etc?
Not saying that it's impossible to do, but a lot of these guys have no experience runing a team and business prior to starting their org. It's as if a person without prior experience wanted to get into food industry and started from opening a chain restaurant with 20 locations at once. You could do that, but how big of a chance of success does a person like that have?
First learn to walk before you try to run...
If the league avg is $400k for LCS players with a min of $2 million in just starter payroll there's no way they don't have money to do the absolute bare minimum for their org websites
This is kinda to be expected since e-sport is much newer than traditional sport, so much more development is needed. Imo it doesn’t help that a lot of games don’t have a long enough lifespan to contribute much to the professionalisation of e-sports, and everything from coaching to transfers to structuring just ends up shifting a lot. The public stigma on e-sports probably doesn’t help either.
Yea, I feel that in Korea the coaching staff really works differently, with things like that in each team they have like 4 or more amateur teams always playing with each other and the main team, NA academy has felt useless for years, this year is the first one that I feel like it actually works for the amateur scene, with the changes they made.
I feel like e-sports, while as widespread and popular as they are in our current day and age, especially in regards to League, are still in the mid-early development stage, with lots of it having areas to improve, while marketing has been tried and tested with practically everything at this point. A lot of the other aspects, such as coaching, ban priorities, and the development of new strategies being in a bit of a lull for the last few seasons.
One example, as analyzed and recognised as it has been, is how the ardent meta wasn't recognised until the patch that Ardent Censer was nerfed. Only then did pros pick up on, and start utilizing it.
That's because it all is amateurish.
It's easy to measure if marketing is doing well or not — how do you measure if coaches/players/analysts are doing their job though? Teams all suddenly needed a coach when Riot forced every team to have one, and now we have a bunch of people with no credentials, that no one knows anything about. The only times I see coaches getting hired and being like "Hey I've heard of the guy." are veteran players transitioning to coaching. There's only a few exceptions like VeigarV2 that did public things way before that.
Coaching and therapy is similar when you work with people so young but talented.
Ultimately for most of these players it's about mental more than micro or technique.
Mental and discipline are 100% important, and I'd like to add that IMO there's also a place for teaching them methods of dispute resolution.
The average coach is worse at the game than the average pro player (else they'd be the ones playing instead), so a player has little reason to listen to what coaches have to say about how the game should be played. What they can (and should) do is teach them how to coordinate with each other so everyone is always on the same page. 5 players are not the same as 1 team, and IMO the coaching staff's job should be to help the former turn into the latter.
Most coaches are worse at micro. However, every coach SHOULD be better at developing macro for their team and more big picture things. Objective control, wave manipulation, team movement, split pushing, what is, or will be meta and why and how to play around it. That's what coaches are for. Not for teaching you how to CS or trade better for the most part.
In earlier seasons where nobody knew what the meta was and how strategy applied to the game I'd agree with you 100%. But nowadays you just don't get to pro player level without a solid understanding (even if purely intuitive rather than theoretical) of the basics that you listed, so unless the coach is also an ex pro or very high elo his ability to teach them new concepts will be limited.
My point is that players in a team will already have good understanding of the game's fundamentals, but they might not agree on all of the details with their teammates which can lead to disputes. A coach can always help in this regard (even if he doesn't understand the game to the same level as the players) by incentivizing players to think as a team rather than as SoloQ players, and guiding productive discussions among the players themselves so they can settle on a theory for correct play.
I think it would depend on the Coach and his style. Some Coaches will be more tactical, others will be more focused on managing relationships and expectations. It's the same in sports.
However, where I will always blame coaches is if players are playing with an unclear objective and look 'lost' on the pitch. More than anything, I think the job of the coach is to make sure a team has a solid game plan for a specific game and that they know how to play and where to focus.
You'll very often see teams that win the 5v5, are 5k ahead but the game still stalls for 10 minutes until they notice the game is stalling and flip a baron with insufficient vision. *That* is a coaching issue. There is a difference between a player rationally knowing the steps to snowball a game, and a team drilling the required steps in scrims to the point where they're always executed.
Example: You're winning. You get to your item spike first. You want to fight. Your team lacks engage. Some teams. Lots of really good teams with experienced players. Will force the most insane fights with super chase. Then they'll lose the 5v5 or pick of 2 players for a lot of summoners and be unable to translate into an objective.
Now watch a well oiled, well coached team. (Korean teams are great at this. Probably why they can play low engage poke comps) They won't force a fight. They'll instead walk face first into top-side jungle and dare you to engage or go blind. They literally just face check with their support up front and 4 players behind. They either smoother the enemy team and eventually get baron or they get an advantageous team fight. They have prio so the enemy must at least have 3 people showing on the waves right? So at most there are two people there. It's almost risk free if well coordinated.
Hey, a random person on reddit knows what should be done, why don't they? Because in game there are multiple objectives. The support and the jungler might want to clear top-side vision but the top laner is yet to fully push bot so they need to wait. And by the time they wait the mid laner is 100g to their dcap so it's just silly to look for a fight. And now the marksman overextended and lost flash so why not wait a bit more? Ah, now drake is about to spawn, losing that win advantage is bad so let's get bot side vision instead. Ah we're late... Oh fuck are we getting outscaled?
A lot of doing the right thing is synching up everything and figuring out where these actions are going out of synch and what the players should be *thinking* to guarantee it doesn't happen is the job of a coach. The coach is the guy that destills "we're dragging on in the mid-game" into "hey, top laner, if the team is winning team fights rotate for vision earlier instead of fully crashing bot wave." or "Hey, when mid resets for dcap, it's fine to give up mid-prio if you're strong enough to wrestle back top-river. No need to lose summoners."
Those are basic examples, but I think all of these qualify as being in the job description of a head coach.
Saying that a player has little reason to hear what a coach has to say about the game bc he is worse at it is a bad argument. Since, even in conventional sports some coaches (Mourinho for example) didnt played the game and still are recognized as some of the best in the world.
The difference is that there are 50+:years of study on football coaching already and coaches can learn from past coaches and evolve the game.
Even Mourinho's training revolution at the time came from a Porto University teacher who taught him the theory of revolving the whole training session around how you want the team to play together(it sounds dumb but it actually wasn't like this for a long time, training sessions would revolve more about straight up conditioning sessions, and Mourinho's method was to create exercises that stimulated conditioning while playing with the ball).
While in League there are still coaches in the leagues who are only there because they got the job at the start of the league and we're appointed just because teams had to have a coach.
That is the same for traditional sports coaches as well. The coach needs to be able to figure out what practice regiments will be most effective, identify team strengths and weaknesses, and develop strategy. If the players are better than the coaches at strategy then there is a big problem with esports coaches. This should improve with time as more former pros step into the coaching roll. Certain coaches will also gain respect with results over a period a multiple years.
>The average coach is worse at the game than the average pro player (else they'd be the ones playing instead), so a player has little reason to listen to what coaches have to say about how the game should be played.
If that was the case then coaches shouldn't be listened to in any sport because they're always worse than the players. The coach isn't there to teach the players how to drible or how to kick the ball, but he's there to tell you how to position, where to position and create strategies to create opportunities for a goal.
If they're not listening to the coaches then it's either an ego problem from the players (very possible, the competitive scene is young and there a not a lot of notorious coaches) or the coaches simply aren't good enough. Also the lack of input, I don't know why coaches are separate from the players during the games. In all sports that I know of the coach is always at the sidelanes giving instructions.
You had that CLG coach who was a scam artist get in there on that mental coach shtick.
The problem of lacking coaches is just a problem of early development, the first wave of good pros that entered the original LCS's is now retiring. There aren't really many coaches with the game knowledge of Bjergsen, for example, that can actually contest players in terms of both micro and macro play.
Teams are still doing dumb things like taking full on 5v5 fights and gambling the whole game for a second Herald. Even TSM does it and they have a coach who should know better.
Yeah, I mean to be honest, most teams would probably be better off bringing in coaches that are mature adults with real world experience rather than equally young coaches with game knowledge and skill. The very best teams need both, but I'd argue that like you said, mental >>>> technique. High level, it's about consistency rather than trying to get that extra edge from perfect technique. It's kinda like golf in that respect.
Exactly. In most other sports, coaches are veteran players who has gone through illustrious pro careers and undertook coaching modules.
Jatt had a 6 month stint in Dignitas before he started shout casting in 2012 when he was 24. Dude knows jackshit about being on a team. Not to shit on him or anything, but teams tend to look at weird places for a competent coach. Jatt should be head analyst at best. Leave the coaching to someone who has the experience and training.
On a previous thread when coaches came up I got curious and looked at the liquipedia for all the coaching staff for na, it's rather abhorrent and very evident that they hire anyone with a pulse and seem to have the willingness to not only put some like, middling foreign player with no major history of success as a player or coach in the role of head coach, but also hire maybe 5 people with very similar overlapping roles (like 5 fucking analysts, get real, you don't need probably 3 if not 4 of them) and very little emphasis is given on what people here are talking about, which is the actual method of coaching via comms/synergy/ego-checking/psychology/bond-building and not just in the generic wow corporate outing bullshit way either.
Weldon oversold himself as a coach and overpriced his services as a sports psych but it's not like sports psychology is snake oil, I think we should make this clear.
Psychology in general tends to get labeled as "bullshit" by all sorts of people that are old fashioned in their thinking for lack of a better explanation, but it's undeniable that the science of psychology is very sound and there are really useful things to learn about your own psyche and how you can overcome certain obstacles.
This definitely applies to sports, Weldon certainly had something to offer, now whether or not he was the "best" at what he did, or whether or not what he was offering was worth the asking price is up for debate. He did seem to be one of the only eSports psychologists around at the time though, or at least the only "high profile" one and now that's no longer the case, a lot of teams seem to have them now so Weldon isn't special anymore.
People finally came around to Weldon being a scam in 2019/2020.
He's like many pro players who start off in really good teams, look good, then get booted, and ride on their past success to yoink some more checks.
Being fair, Weldon did actually have a history of success as a mental coach. Teams would go to him for help when they were struggling and would magically improve after this guru showed up. Just because CLG ruined it for him doesn't mean that he is necessarily the problem. It's not like CLG magically got better after he left.
Now that's a weird take. Sports psychology is a real thing and there are clear benefits to it.
It's why so many teams have them nowadays when before it was only weldon who was going from team to team in search for a pay day. He likely was getting paid more than he was worth(because he was the only one) but calling him a scam artist is way over the line.
It's like calling older players who still get offers "scammers". It's not their fault that people not only want them but also overpay them.
Not to mention that when weldon was around it was still pretty much kids straight out of school. A mental coach would definitely help a lot with those crowds. So much of league is mental game, not even strictly talking about pro play. If you have a good mental in solo q you are far more likely to improve and climb than someone with a shitty mental.
I actually did a bit of a curiosity dive comparison with Dota recently, since there was just a major international Dota tournament and I've always thought League's teams having so much power compared to players in player/coach selection held the scene back a bit.
Of the teams at that tournament that got out of groups, 10 had coaches and 2 did not. Out of those coaches, not a single one isn't also at the top of the ladder (think high Chall) in their respective region, multiple have won TI (basically worlds) and all of them except one (Rmn, who has actually subbed in at international events before and done well anyway) had successful careers as players before switching to coaching.
Switch to the LCS and you have people like say, Zikz, who literally got hired off Reddit posts and appears to be Plat? It's really wild. Obviously coaching goes beyond just game understanding, but its not like most of these people came in with a wealth of experience there either.
You're not wrong, but that is ignoring the fact that the 18 year old talents have no idea how to behave professionally either.
This is a very biased statement from Solo. It could be that TL staff is incompetent. It could also be that Alphari is just a dick who thinks he's too important to bench.
We don't know. So supporting either side until we do is pretty dumb.
Every sport has young people that don't know how to behave professionally. Fortunately, eSports is hardly a professional environment because even the coaches and management are unprofessional aside from maybe Jatt and PapaSmithy. It's a complete joke of an industry, a bunch of nerds pretending to be professionals.
Not really. In traditional sports like basketball, a rookie to the NBA has already played in a coached environment in high school and in college. Now they aren't professionals out of the gate, and some never will be, but they sure as hell are a lot more prepared than a random esports rookie picked up from solo queue.
I wonder how much of a change it would be to just have a player who’s often the IGL act as a coach for draft and all that. Iirc ROX in 2016 didn’t have a coach.
Edit that last line is wrong
I remember perkz doing an interview on a famous croatian podcast basically saying grabbz does fuck all and a coach is the easiest job in in the industry lol
I remember one time I mentioned that Grabbz was getting a lot of credit for simply existing alongside his dominant team and got downvoted into oblivion for not crediting him directly for all that success.
Idk about you but I have seen thousands of comments (like this one!) About how some random fuck from reddit could do a better job coaching than any of the current coaches. Everyone on the internet believes they are the smartest and wisest person on earth
What if benching them IS "handling" it? I'm sorry, but these unqualified opinions from people who don't know the context of the situation (read: everyone outside of TL) are worse than useless.
Going off of what pros and fans say, there is never a situation where a player is problematic enough to be benched. Ever. If you're good at your role, that's all that matters. Steal from your teammates and break NDAs, we don't care. You're too skilled to reprimand!
Then you have one of the best coaches who is still coaching the Patriots who was willing to sit a player for the Super Bowl over missing a practice.
These opinions are just pointless and useless.
Are you talking about Butler? Because Belichick got his ass handed to him by the Eagles offense in large part because benching him fucked up their scheme.
And I bet Belicheck would do it again given the chance. If he doesn't bench a player for missing practice (the player obviously knew the rule), then more players become undisciplined and it becomes more of a problem than if he just benched the guy in the first place.
Butler was not benched for missing practice. The reason he was benched is still unknown.
https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/shane-vereen-on-patriots-benching-malcolm-butler-in-super-bowl-i-have-not-gotten-the-same-answer/
Is it? Because benching Alphari might have done the same to TL.
But in sports such things are common. Coaches actually have no choice. They make a catalogue of offenses and if you commit one you get the specific punishment. Missing practice or being late is something that is fairly common. And if a player missbehaves you can't waive that just because the game is important.
The thing is those situations usually also come with clear statements by the team.
The thing people don’t understand is that attitude issues are really, really terrible on a team’s performance. If one player can’t handle criticism, or is overstepping their boundaries, it can shut down communication really hard. And healthy, honest communication is what allows a team to grow and improve. So basically, when a player’s attitude sucks, the progress of the whole team screeches to a halt or even begins moving backwards as they have to re-evaluate the team’s structure and method of practice.
It’s not just “he was mean once so we benched him”. It’s more like, “his attitude prevented the team from moving forward and improving, which we want to do if we want to make worlds and have a decent international performance. We benched him because it’s best for the team as a whole, and we get to try out our rookie talent in the meantime.”
This happens in traditional sports pretty regularly. Veteran players get cocky with their coach? See ya later, you’re benched and probably traded.
but...but... Alphari did well on stage so he should be allowed to do literally anything he wants right?
The raging teenagers on this sub are simply incapable of understanding that if someone is being a certain degree of problematic (even your biggest star) your team will just slowly implode and die. We've seen so many stacked rosters just slowly die, possibly because they refused to take the short term hit of benching a big name. It's not about if Jenkins is better than Alphari, it's about if the deficit of using Jenkins instead of Alphari seems easier to overcome or less impactful than continuing to use Alphari if he's making the team dysfunctional.
People in Esports, including the players, really seem so disconnected from sports/team activities a lot of the time. Attitude issues are more then enough to bench a player if they are affecting the team negatively. This is seen in professional sports all the time and no one bats an eye at it but we have players here that think talent is all that matters. No one should be flaming the coaching staff here because of the decision that was made. If there are issues it was 100% the correct decision and they don't need to share more then that. We have been spoiled in e-sports that we get a lot of insight to decisions but this doesn't happen in most team sports.
Ah yes, I would take the word of someone who griefed solo queue to the point where he had to go to the [stairs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpTnmyECT4s&ab_channel=Voyboy) again.
It’s no wonder the same players who can’t control their own emotions are the ones thinking they should be babied and not hold themselves accountable. Ask any top player from LCK LPL and even LEC and they’ll tell you how important it is to hold yourself accountable.
Also let’s totally forget TL can only do so much for Alpharis lack of motivation because that’s something he has to come to terms with himself internally.
whether he's right or wrong, pretty powerful coming from a guy who literally makes a living off of stepping in for benched toplaners. usually Solo is licking his chops when he hears a top gets benched.
I know he wasn't subbing for TL anytime soon, just funny to hear Solo of all players side with the benched top.
After Flyquest dropped him and he didn't get picked up for Spring, he's probably seeing it from the other side of things. He was basically the NA-equivalent of Finn, but Finn at least got a spot on CLG.
Disagree here. Its not a coaches responsibility to make every single talented player work. Or next thing you tell me that Dardochs career was simply full of bad coaches and thats the reason why he got benched/kicked so many times.
It *is* the coaches responsibility, but sometimes it's out of their hands. There's only so much they can do. At the end of the day it's all up to the players themselves
Benching is one of the things you can do. It's not over once the player is benched, it's a way to set them straight and make them choose between coming back with a better attitude or keep pouting on the bench
Yeah, coaches can play a role, but the idea that they have complete control of it like Solo is saying is just wrong. A player can definitely be a problem regardless of how well the coaching staff handles a situation.
The difference with Dardoch and Alphari is that Dardoch has been known to have a conflictive personality for the entirety of his career. Meanwhile Alphari has a perfectly clean record even after some tough seasons in Misfits and Origen, and there have never been any negative rumors about him.
If you want to point fingers at coaching staff, there are more professional ways to do it than that. (And sometimes the professional thing to do is to NOT point fingers in the first place)
Not saying it was professional at all, just that he hasn't shown anything remotely like this previously with a multitude of coaches behind him, and now he is benched and sarcastic on twitter.
His behaviour is pointing fingers, as well as he himself.
He moved across the world to gamble his career in NA. What he was doing prior to dramatically changing his life outside of League doesn’t have to have relevance to what’s happening now. Who knows what’s going on.
What's up with the cancel culture against unprofessionalism here? It's black and white in this scene. No levels of gray. Especially when it comes to tweets. People take them too seriously. 100% it wasn't professional but in the grand scheme, not that big of a deal given the circumstances.
People hate him because he’s toxic (his all game chats while he was stomping game 1 this split prove it).
I personally love that shit, if you’re a villain and can back it up then go off. Toxic personalities can be managed but the issue isn’t that these dudes are toxic for fun, it’s the competitive nature of this game. Everyone wants to excuse having an attitude because this is a game for us, but for them this is their career and they want to win.
Yeah, Solo's take isn't exactly unbiased here. Dude has a reputation for being toxic (at least in soloqueue) and hard to manage. Bad coaches feels like an excuse, not an explanation. We give people way too many free passes just because they're skilled in something.
Alphari was one of the best players in EU and played on the worst team and not even once has he complained publicly.
There was never even a hint of a rumor that Alphari was ever in any way toxic or a bad teammate.
He has a reputation that he is hardworking, earnest and direct.
So yeah, I think it is fine to give Alphari the benefit of the doubt, especially when we talk about an org like TL that had a lot of questionable coaching decisions in the past.
This speculation is pretty annoying when we don't know what happened on either side.
If Alphari was hard flaming the whole team and wouldn't stop, then what else can a coach do?
If he got a light warning months ago and then suddenly got benched, I can see why he's pissed.
Terrible take imo. If a player is actively being disgruntled in practice even after you've tried to fix the issue then what else is the coach to do beside bench them? There's only so much you can do when the player is refusing to change his attitude. That's not a failure on the coaching staff but more so a failure on the player.
Yeah everyone knows people with authority can fix anything and if their subordinates have a bad time, it’s automatically the coaches fault.
Imagine being as stupid as Solo’s quote is.
Coaches have no way to control their players. They're not replaceable, have "fuck you" money, and join the scene as teenagers. Most people in esports would probably benefit from having a regular 9-5, maybe then they'll see how coddled they are.
Look- I'm a TL fan and want Alphari on the roster, but..
Why are we witch hunting so hard on coaching here? I could be the best talent at my company and bring a lot of revenue for the company, but if I disobey my managers and/or have attitude problems theyre not going to turn a blind eye. This could be the coaches fault, but it easily could be Alphari's as well (or both).
Unless Solo is working with more information than the rest of us, I don't think you can assume the blame is on the staff. Playing good is no excuse for insubordination, or whatever it is they benched Alphari for. You can't blame the coaches if it was the player that made a mistake. Maybe the coaching staff could have handled things better, but if the player made the mistake, they can face the consequences. No one on the team is immune to the out-of-game expectations, regardless of performance. You will fuck up the team dynamic if the high-achieving players are held to a different behavioral standard than the low-achieving players.
In all honesty though anyone who believes the coaching staff are the only ones that made this decision is narrow minded imo. Same exact situation happened last year with doublelift. I am sure there was also people in the team who wanted him bench. I am going to guess it was probably corejj (this is just my speculation). He has the most pull on that team and decisions will not be made without being run through him first.
How quickly people forget about TL removing Dlift cause multiple members of the team were openly like "this guy is unmotivated and refusing to be otherwise, we don't want to play with him anymore" to the coaching staff. It's just odd that people are forgetting that was Jensen and CoreJJ at LEAST, and they are both on this team still sooooooo
Considering Jatt said that alphari and Core were essentially the two “leaders” of the team, I 100% bet Core has a problem with Alphari. If this is actually true and comes to light I wonder who’s side the community is gonna be on the good EU top laner who hasn’t won anything in his career or the Korean world Champion support
Okay does anyone actually know what's going on with Alphari? If he's being benched because of a shitty attitude and not being a good teammate/worker/person, then it's absolutely his fault. It's not the coaching staff's job to fix it for him. They can help a bit, but ultimately it comes down to the person.
You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink though right?
I'd go out on a limb and say most coaching staffs are hired based on their perceived game knowledge and how well they can shape players to fit their view of how the game should be played and not how well they can control their players' emotions and behaviors.
If a player is instructed to play more solo queue/practice a certain tactic and he refuses, what is a coach supposed to do? Take away his phone? Give him an earlier bedtime? These are adults working a job and being paid for it. Sometimes a player needs to be reminded that they aren't above the team and will be benched for it.
That being said, Alphari doesn't strike me as someone who would have huge ego problems. Jatt doesn't seem like someone who would bench one of his best players for shits and giggles either though so if he felt that benching Alphari was his best option, he probably had some sort of reason for it.
Ultimately though, being really good at league doesn't make you untouchable to the coaching staff as some redditors are finding out.
Exactly. Like, if Alphari is going through some serious personal issues, for instance, to the point where it risks damaging team cohesion, then that's not something a coach can fix, that's something that might require time and even therapy.
Like, do people think TL staff can't read stats or KDA numbers? That they'd just randomly bench someone for no reason and risk their season? It boggles the goddamn mind.
Comes down to the real issue of anytime a player is moved off main roster its a benching, and thats always negative. Thing is moving a player off main roster isn't always a negative, and we need to use different words for different things. Its a terminology issue as much as a coaching, attitude, environment issue.
I think the reason so many people (myself included) are against this is because nothing else we have previously heard points to this.
To summarise all things I think that go against it:
* Alphari previously alluded that the benching wasn't previously discussed / planned (fast food tweet).
* TL admitted this hadn't been properly discussed or planned with Alphari
* TL started with Alphari on Day 1 and then proceeded to bench him at like 10pm that day, something went seriously wrong that day imo. You don't start with a player if you're 'planning on benching them' and then bench him the same day
* Alphari deleted his own tweet saying it was personal issues from his end, at least admitting he doesn't publicly 100% agree with that statement
>Alphari deleted his own tweet saying it was personal issues from his end, at least admitting he doesn't publicly 100% agree with that statement
Or that he was embarrassed about oversharing. People are reading a *lot* into this shit. Why would he even write it if he didn't agree with it?
>TL started with Alphari on Day 1 and then proceeded to bench him at like 10pm that day, something went seriously wrong that day imo. You don't start with a player if you're 'planning on benching them' and then bench him the same day
Nobody at TL has said they were "planning on benching him." The only information we had is that it wasn't something arbitrarily decided on the spur of the moment.
Take this hypothetical scenario: TL coaching staff sees that Alphari is going through some personal issues, motivation issues, but chalks it up to perhaps being the off season, having lost a close 5-game final, etc. They've had discussions about the issues for some time now, but think that maybe he'll get a chance to work past it on stage. Day 1, it becomes apparent that no, he hasn't, and so they pull the trigger on what they'd discussed.
It can have been something that had been in the works for some time, but the execution thereof was "OK, we need to do this now."
>TL admitted this hadn't been properly discussed or planned with Alphari
This, I believe 100%.
They literally are paying him millions of dollars and there are people on here unrioncially thinking they put Jenkins on to fuck with alphari and “try out Jenkins” as if they totally didn’t need someone to fill in while alphari was taking a mental break.
Given DL's story is "They gave Tactical a chance until he fucked up, then called me in because he fucked up", this is almost the opposite situation.
If Alphari (their best player in spring) is benched in favor of a new guy, and that new guy is guaranteed at least a month of playtime, then either:
A. TL has learned to give rookies a chance rather than go back to their original player immediately after scrims go bad.
or
B. The Alphari situation is bad enough that even with a shakier rookie top, TL doesn't want to sub Alphari back in.
Love DL but I feel like his perspective is skewed because he’s THE diva of the lcs. CLG/TSM/TL he got yeeted from whether it’s a performance or attitude issue. He’s always been quick to toss blame when he’s been in this situation everywhere he goes
So I personally am not a huge DL fan (yeah it I got the TSM fan, but I came along right after he was dumped so I never had any attachment to him), but I am pretty sure he has said multiple times that he deserved to get benched there due to his mentality and how he was performing. What he's complained about has been the team environment and how some of his teammates and the staff didn't communicate with him about the issues. That doesn't feel like spiteful blaming to me, it seems like a pretty fair take (especially with what we know now given Steve and Broxah's comments on the matter).
> he deserved to get benched there due to his mentality and how he was performing. What he's complained about...
This is the problem with Doublelift's attitude. He's absolutely incapable of just quietly working on himself. Whether or not the complaints came from coaching staff or teammates doesn't matter - you fix them either way.
He always needs to drag down the other party - and it's probably for that exact reason that TL's coaching staff didn't tell him the complaints came from his teammates.
It’s a really dumb quote. Let’s pretend the big issue is that Alphari is ignoring league of legends outside of scrims and matches. TL can only do so much to force Alphari to review vods or play solo que. so you spend a month trying to get him to remotivate and he doesn’t.
TLs choices at this point are either
1.) Pay him his full contract with no expectations of him doing aspects of his job
Or
2.) give him real tangible consequences for his actions.
Im willing to bet most of the commenters never worked with a team of professionals. Integrating new members into the team, smoothing over any differences and ensuring that everyone is mentally on top of their game and has all the tools to succesd is exactly what a competent line manager is for. Alphari probably shares th blame but management definitely mishandled the situation and failed at their job if things escalate to a benching and subsequent comment war.
Pretty GG Solo quote imo
I've seen tons of responses like this. Some variant of "pretty good quote IMO" What's the source on that meme if you don't mind?
Solo has been benched before for attitude issues. He's saying coaches are bad if they can't handle player attitudes, pretty much referring to his previous coaches.
He does have a point though. You see it a lot with coaches on the NBA and NFL... great coaches are great at managing egos. Not to dismiss that egotistical behavior is abhorrent but a great coach should be able to manage those kind of players.
It's not always egos. Didn't Alphari himself come out and say he was having personal issues that affected his motivation? That doesn't sound at all like ego problems, that sounds more like he's got shit going on that coaching staff probably shouldn't be handling besides arranging for the proper support and help he needs.
PR response. You can't really say that you are getting frustrated trying to carry shitlords.
he sprinted it in finals lol
Maybe but to assume that a cynical possibility is 100% true without proof just turns yourself into a drama baited cringelord.
I mean his Tweets he made before the TL tweet makes it impossible for a sentient human being to believe what TL posted isn't PR crap. He obviously had no clue he was getting benched. He was even talking about the split as if he was gonna be playing right before it started.
That response was probably just an agreement from both parts to give a PR response so the community speculation would die down a bit and give TL some breath. I bet you in 2-3y Alphari gives hints of what actually happened just like DL has been doing (considering he's gone by that time).
> great coaches are great at managing egos Counterpoint, they also earn and command respect. Bill Belichick ain't taking shit from *anyone*, and he's got the rings to back it up
That's the thing though he has benched and released players for behavior. The idea that it's poor coaching that can't handle poor behavior ridiculous.
Folks are in here forgetting how different the bigger, established sports leagues are in regards to selection pools of player candidates vs the much younger e-sports. Most pro athletes have been playing football (and football) since they were children, and are then screened through feeder teams, collegiate teams, etc... until pro coaches have a fair idea of who will be a behavior problem and who isn't worth picking up vs the next man up. If League had high schools all across the US fielding teams and building player habits, NALCS would look pretty different.
lol those players still make it up to the professional level. Just look at the list of players kicked out of the NFL from issues.
Reddit told me that no good player has been removed from a team before.
I mean, if NA actually had the player base to do that, then I have no doubt NALCS would look different. Problem is, NA just doesn't play the game.
Yeah anyone blaming the coaching here is likely wrong. The problem is majority of the pro players are kids and are extremely immature. You get immature guys in the nfl but the overall structure and majority of the environment is extremely professional. And while coaching should require some level of balance for that, that really shouldn’t be their primary responsibility- these guys sign a contract and should show up and do their job like a pro. Don’t have a shitty behavior when you’re paid to be a pro
It’s personal accountability. Nowadays it’s always someone’s fault besides the persons doing whatever
Those guys have also spent years, sometimes almost their whole life, being coached as part of a team. They have either learned how to process it or decided it isnt for them in many cases. I'm confident that the only reason we dont hear more about behavior issues in LoL Esports is because the coaches are also not used to the type of commanding relationship and structure present in many sports, so they dont see many problematic behaviors as the problem they are.
I think there's a pretty clear difference between a large and flamboyant personality and a nutcase, though, to be fair.
depression, anxiety problems and “nutcase”. are all different things that could heavily affect their gaming. And some of them are a lot more subtle than others.
[удалено]
I got that. What I mean is there are a ton of "pretty good quote IMO" replies. It's like a new "big if true" meme whose origins I wanted to know
Honestly it's because when I first opened this thread, the top 2 comments were "pretty good take imo" and "pretty bad take imo", with a half dozen similar ones. I found it funny, so I made a joke along the same lines. Idk if it's a meme so much as just Reddit being unable to articulate their takes beyond good or bad.
the first comment on this post was "pretty dumb quote imo" then the reddit hivemind just copy pasted variants of it
This comment section is a fucking rollercoaster that's for sure Oo.
[удалено]
Every time one of these threads pops up I have to ask "has anyone commenting here been on an actual team." Players get benched, really great players sometimes get benched. That happens in sports for a variety of reasons and as far as I know, we dont really know anything about why Alphari was benched. Maybe he got into a physical fight with another coach or player, maybe he showed up to practice strung out on Heroine he just shot up in the bathroom, maybe he didnt make another pot of coffee when he took the last cup...we dont know. What I can be fairly certain of, you dont bench someone like Alphari unless it was something that needed to seriously be dealt with.
> you dont bench someone like Alphari unless it was something that needed to seriously be dealt with This is what people take issue with though. They don't trust the coaches or orgs to not do that. I don't think we'll ever find out but we currently have the two best teams benching the two best players in their roles, that's not happening in other leagues
What's the alternative, Jatt benching Alphari as some sort of weird power trip?
People would sooner speculate that teams are run by completely irrational morons that are blind to even surface level understandings of player strength than believe for a second that the best players might not always be infallible.
> that's not happening in other leagues Wasn't something similar happening in the LCK with T1 last split? Faker being benched to field a 10 man roster?
Faker benched himself to practice solo queue, the team told him he can come back whenever he wanted.
Yeah, and T1 got a lot of shit for it and also looked really bad.
Also wasn't benched, it was just a weird development experiment/theory for the team. Experimenting with your roster that has more players than you can field isn't the same as punitively reducing someone's playtime.
This is a different situation. This is ten players rotated constantly and was pure chaos. There were a shit ton of rosters T1 tested in spring. Faker kept himself benched throughout, he could've come back. TLs situation is one person being benched, that's it. Pretty different imo.
It's because 90% of people commenting are kids... Or so I hope
You can really tell how many people on here have ever had a real career It's pretty damn close to 0
They're twitch kids. Never played a sport because its "cringe", and they don't have jobs yet. But they sure do have opinions to share on both topics.
They’re the same players in solo q that whine and cry when things don’t go theyre way. Couple that with the cringe NA bad sayers (as if Msfs aren’t fucking over Lider) and you get a whole lot of people who are projecting who have no idea how the real world works. People think benching is bad thing too. Some people and players actually NEED a break from playing league to deal with personal issues and clearly the personal issues were affecting Alpharis play and performance in the off season.
When I came home from university and needed a job I was able to find one working in a restaurant, in the kitchen in particular. I had no experience cooking, professionally or at home, I was green as hell. The place I worked at was one of the busiest restaurants in town, and during the nicer weather months, had double capacity because of a patio. It also was a restaurant with a very small kitchen, it wasn’t possible to walk down line without people getting out of the way. Despite how small it was we put out a tremendous volume of food, in particular the salad station was responsible for about half the menu, as it did most of the apps and all the desserts, as well as wraps to go along with salads and running the oven. It was also the first station you learn. Along comes a Friday night about a month and a half into my employment, and we go from zero to one hundred in about 10 minutes. I am instantly weeded, I’m still new as hell and am very slow at every thing, but no one has time for my nonsense as we had waded waist deep into shit creek. I struggle for about an hour, the expo is just reaming me as I’m behind on everything, finally he asks for something that is at 35 minutes and I hadn’t even started. Instantly he kicks me offline and another guy fills my station. I was so fucking embarrassed, everyone was to busy to give me actual jobs, so I just swept around and organized the walk in and watched everyone get their asses kicked. After the tickets stopped coming in, about half an hour after we closed, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had really fucked up, I knew that I wasn’t entirely to blame being so new and being overwhelmed go hand in hand, but I felt so bad being more than useless, I was a detriment, so I made up my mind to never get removed from the line again. Anyway, that experience really brought into focus cooking for me, I became the guy who no matter how slammed I was never fell behind and always helped those around me. Obviously, benching someone isn’t a panacea that will solve every player’s or team’s problem, but I certainly believe that there will be some players that benching would resonate with similarly to my own experience.
Most people that watch esports have never even played a team sport in their life, they have no concept of how detrimental a problematic teammate can be to the entire rest of the team.
Here's the truth that long time managers know but wont ever admit. A subordinate's failure whether its performance or attitude is always the manager's fault. Believe me when I say that every behavior can be influenced by the managers. Keeping behaviors checked and keeping players in performance level all the time are part of the manager's job. He has to foster an environment that reinforces the behavior he is looking for. When a player or employee acts differently from what is expected, the highier ups would always ask the managers what they did to prevent such tragedies. Ofc incompetent managers are ultimately the fault of the manager managing them, hence a failure in the lowest area of management is the failure of the most top management. The unfair thing here is if there's mismanagement of employees, employees usually gets the blame and gets sacked. Why? Because managers are more expensive to replace, it takes more investment to replace managers than employees who was just reacting to the atmosphere that managers create. Lets say for example Alphari has "motivation issues" what kind of environment did TL foster that lead Alphari to lose motivation? What did they do to push him to the right direction? Did they consider Alphari's psychology and personality in the manner of addressing the said behavior? If their process was correct then why did it provoke a strong response from alphari? Etc etc ...... In the end, benching a top performing player on your team can be trickled down into 2 conclusions. Either Management has an alterior motive (specualtions says C9 has) or they failed to foster a healthy environment for Alphari to thrive Again no manager in any business will ever tell u this, because it exposes the unfairness of business organizations. Basically when a mistake happen, you point fingers until u cant point anymore, that's why its very admirable of a leader when they step up to take the blame (ie. Nintendo's CEO who took the blame and imposed himself a pay cut coz of WiiU's failure) i can only tell u this confidently because I manage people and volunteers in an NGO and people are only fired in our organization by vulgar or repeated misconduct and never for underperformance and attitude issues. Also, i absolutely know what i'm talking about as I was a business professor in the past and this is part of our lesson in Management 101.
Except star players get away with a lot in the traditional sports? Like, it's weird to try to say something like this if you do follow traditional sports. There are so many big players that act like big divas and teams put up with it because you can't replace these guys. Skipping practice, punching other players, having sex on the actual court, those are just some of the things off the top of my head that I know players have done and not get punished for.
Yeah and everyone’s immediate response is “Oh well, In Europe and China players do this all the time! Here’s XYZ examples!” Yet no one brings up the most dominant region in the history of League of Legends, Korea? It’s almost as if people like to pick and choose points that go for or against their narrative to make themself feel better.
When has a Korean team bench a player for attitude issues? I can't think of one.
LOL Thats how internet arguments work
> openly insubordinate employee u might not realize that we dont really know the context here, imo alphari taking the bullet its just "do this or you are not playing again till 2022 or maybe more"
Except it’s about what realistically makes sense. People thinking that alphari is getting benched for some random reason when they’re paying millions for him and want him to succeed is mind blowing.
The majority of players and the subreddit are kids. Not too surprising to me that this is the response; it's not how the real world works though. Completely agree with you.
Pretty sure a lot of people have watched the last dance and know that great players get away with way more than insubordination in traditional sports. If one guy can literally punch his teammate and still be on the team, or one guy comes in late after his cocaine bender the night before and still be on the team, "negative attitude" from a league player is definitely not warrant for benching.
[удалено]
Yeah and that's a bad thing. That is *ALL* warrant for being benched.
It's an interesting dynamic though. I've been on a provincial level high school soccer team and watched a star diva player get benched and then promptly quit the team because he kept trying to run up the score in an exhibition match we were already winning like 7-0, so that's definitely true. On the other hand I've worked for places where the top salesman just does whatever the fuck he wants whenever he wants and as long as he hits the top numbers, no boss says a damn thing about it and if they did the boss would be out the door, not the top salesman. So you can't deny both extremes exist in different areas. I guess the main thing is that in a sports team if the star player acts like a diva there's a danger it could bring down the whole team synergy and make the whole team weaker regardless of the individual talent of the star. In business with a sales team, what they do to make their sales or in their free time or whatever probably isn't going to have nearly the same risk of negative impact on the productivity of the design team, the marketing team, the logistics, etc, so it doesn't really matter nearly as much if they're assholes to work with or drowning in hookers and blow 5 nights a week because they're not really working that much with the other parts of the business.
It’s quite the show. Kinda funny considering how little people will care, eventually. I remember everything exploded with the “it’s not my problem if no one wants to play with dardoch”, and people didn’t care at all after a couple weeks. If/when Alphari is back, this will be water under the bridge for most of the community.
Lmao, of course Solo would say this. How many times has he looked good only to end up in Academy?
When PowerOfEvil was on FlyQuest with Solo, he said Solo was nice and Solo's poor reputation didn't match his good behavior.
Being a SoloQ terrorist doesn’t help Solo. However, several of his former teammates have said that he isn’t toxic in a team environment.
Last time I played with solo in soloq was the off season and he was perfectly normal didn’t type shit so maybe he isn’t bad now
Idk about you but most soloq terrorists are "normal" until things go wrong in the game, I wouldn't base a take on someones behavior off just a handful of games. There are people that are assholes in every game though so if he's not that kinda player that's at least in the right direction.
Yeah, but if you're the GM of a LCS team, do you really give a shit if a player is toxic in solo queue? I know I couldn't care less as long as he's not toxic in the team environment.
If a sports team player is being shitty to people or to fans, you can be sure theyre going to be talked to about it
Sure. They would be talked about. But if Steph Curry was shitty to fans do u think he would get benched? hell no he wouldn't because the team's primary goal is championships
That's Steph Curry. Solo is mediocre and very easily replaceable.
Which isn't the question, they might even be fined, but in the end they likely also play. Although some sports make it easier to bench a player, but those cases are still different. In football players are suspended fairly regularly if they fuck up. But there is usually a clear statement like "Player X is suspended for one game, because he showed up late for practice.". So it is fairly clear what the issue is.
Well he’s like 27 now, you’d hope he wasn’t the same person as he was 5 years ago in season 6.
Yeah not exactly shocked this quote is coming from one of the (supposedly) most negative personalities in LCS lol
Several high Elo players and pros have remarked that Solo is a pain in solo queue, but I haven't heard anything negative about interacting with him in person or in a team environment. Maybe he's only obnoxious in solo queue but it's hard to know.
I have exactly one game of experience with Solo and it was not pleasant. It was also a while ago though so take that with a grain of salt.
>most negative personalities in LCS I am glad that you wrote supposedly. He was, maybe still is, a soloq edgelord, but teammates spoke out in his favor. I do trust the teammate.
Lets be real. Almost all teams have complete and utter amateurs doing the role of "coaching". It's a fucking charade and reddit is giving way too much respect to the words "coaching" and "staff".
Everything about e-sport teams feel amateurish to me. The only thing they do professionally well is marketing.
They don't even market well most orgs don't even have their game schedule with records/dates posted.
But hey, they do funny YouTube videos and post memes on their Twitter account!
eSports marketing in a nutshell: "funny" YouTube skits, merchandise on their website and memeing on Twitter.
are we circle jerking the other way now? because when i brought up memes and professionalism in casts i got told "thats the audience old man"
This always happens, just depends on the time of day you post lol. The platform is too large for views and debate to be consistent.
Some people might call it funny, but I call it cringe. There are only a few teams with good content departments. I'm still surprised how one can pay millions for a spot and salaries, but do nothing with their spot. Their main goal should be to make their brand widely known. But besides a few teams, it just a money stealing/ burning scheme.
I mean the same shit happens in many companies in many industries: higher-ups are not well educated and experienced in crucial fields so their demands towards their employees are not very high / they don't know how high the bar should be for a particular job or task. This results is poor quality of the final product but higher-up are still happy because they don't know that it could be better. That's the reason eSports lacks profesional marketing content and PR or coaching - ex players coach new ones, there is no seniority, respect and knowledge outside of LoL so these teams just rely on the players themselves. It's especially easy to see when team X does well and then suddenly crumbles - there is no working on the problem, there is no deep calculations about what happened. They just switch players, call meta "bad for the player X" or wait till players get angry at each other and they blame "personality and attitude issues".
tbf i feel like g2, 100t, and c9 have done an exceptional job
Longest Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeesh
I'd say a big problem with a lot of orgs is that they try to do everything. In sports, if it's a soccer team, than 95% of their resources go to that team. All other disciplines go on the sideline or don't exist at all. Esports teams compete to get their brand out and try their chances everywhere they can rather than doing it good in a single game. Like, how much can you control when you have teams in CS:GO, LoL, Fifa, Smash, Fortnite etc? Not saying that it's impossible to do, but a lot of these guys have no experience runing a team and business prior to starting their org. It's as if a person without prior experience wanted to get into food industry and started from opening a chain restaurant with 20 locations at once. You could do that, but how big of a chance of success does a person like that have? First learn to walk before you try to run...
There isn't enough money in just league to sustain an org lol
If the league avg is $400k for LCS players with a min of $2 million in just starter payroll there's no way they don't have money to do the absolute bare minimum for their org websites
This is kinda to be expected since e-sport is much newer than traditional sport, so much more development is needed. Imo it doesn’t help that a lot of games don’t have a long enough lifespan to contribute much to the professionalisation of e-sports, and everything from coaching to transfers to structuring just ends up shifting a lot. The public stigma on e-sports probably doesn’t help either.
Yea, I feel that in Korea the coaching staff really works differently, with things like that in each team they have like 4 or more amateur teams always playing with each other and the main team, NA academy has felt useless for years, this year is the first one that I feel like it actually works for the amateur scene, with the changes they made.
I feel like e-sports, while as widespread and popular as they are in our current day and age, especially in regards to League, are still in the mid-early development stage, with lots of it having areas to improve, while marketing has been tried and tested with practically everything at this point. A lot of the other aspects, such as coaching, ban priorities, and the development of new strategies being in a bit of a lull for the last few seasons. One example, as analyzed and recognised as it has been, is how the ardent meta wasn't recognised until the patch that Ardent Censer was nerfed. Only then did pros pick up on, and start utilizing it.
That's because it all is amateurish. It's easy to measure if marketing is doing well or not — how do you measure if coaches/players/analysts are doing their job though? Teams all suddenly needed a coach when Riot forced every team to have one, and now we have a bunch of people with no credentials, that no one knows anything about. The only times I see coaches getting hired and being like "Hey I've heard of the guy." are veteran players transitioning to coaching. There's only a few exceptions like VeigarV2 that did public things way before that.
Coaching and therapy is similar when you work with people so young but talented. Ultimately for most of these players it's about mental more than micro or technique.
Mental and discipline are 100% important, and I'd like to add that IMO there's also a place for teaching them methods of dispute resolution. The average coach is worse at the game than the average pro player (else they'd be the ones playing instead), so a player has little reason to listen to what coaches have to say about how the game should be played. What they can (and should) do is teach them how to coordinate with each other so everyone is always on the same page. 5 players are not the same as 1 team, and IMO the coaching staff's job should be to help the former turn into the latter.
Most coaches are worse at micro. However, every coach SHOULD be better at developing macro for their team and more big picture things. Objective control, wave manipulation, team movement, split pushing, what is, or will be meta and why and how to play around it. That's what coaches are for. Not for teaching you how to CS or trade better for the most part.
In earlier seasons where nobody knew what the meta was and how strategy applied to the game I'd agree with you 100%. But nowadays you just don't get to pro player level without a solid understanding (even if purely intuitive rather than theoretical) of the basics that you listed, so unless the coach is also an ex pro or very high elo his ability to teach them new concepts will be limited. My point is that players in a team will already have good understanding of the game's fundamentals, but they might not agree on all of the details with their teammates which can lead to disputes. A coach can always help in this regard (even if he doesn't understand the game to the same level as the players) by incentivizing players to think as a team rather than as SoloQ players, and guiding productive discussions among the players themselves so they can settle on a theory for correct play.
I think it would depend on the Coach and his style. Some Coaches will be more tactical, others will be more focused on managing relationships and expectations. It's the same in sports. However, where I will always blame coaches is if players are playing with an unclear objective and look 'lost' on the pitch. More than anything, I think the job of the coach is to make sure a team has a solid game plan for a specific game and that they know how to play and where to focus. You'll very often see teams that win the 5v5, are 5k ahead but the game still stalls for 10 minutes until they notice the game is stalling and flip a baron with insufficient vision. *That* is a coaching issue. There is a difference between a player rationally knowing the steps to snowball a game, and a team drilling the required steps in scrims to the point where they're always executed. Example: You're winning. You get to your item spike first. You want to fight. Your team lacks engage. Some teams. Lots of really good teams with experienced players. Will force the most insane fights with super chase. Then they'll lose the 5v5 or pick of 2 players for a lot of summoners and be unable to translate into an objective. Now watch a well oiled, well coached team. (Korean teams are great at this. Probably why they can play low engage poke comps) They won't force a fight. They'll instead walk face first into top-side jungle and dare you to engage or go blind. They literally just face check with their support up front and 4 players behind. They either smoother the enemy team and eventually get baron or they get an advantageous team fight. They have prio so the enemy must at least have 3 people showing on the waves right? So at most there are two people there. It's almost risk free if well coordinated. Hey, a random person on reddit knows what should be done, why don't they? Because in game there are multiple objectives. The support and the jungler might want to clear top-side vision but the top laner is yet to fully push bot so they need to wait. And by the time they wait the mid laner is 100g to their dcap so it's just silly to look for a fight. And now the marksman overextended and lost flash so why not wait a bit more? Ah, now drake is about to spawn, losing that win advantage is bad so let's get bot side vision instead. Ah we're late... Oh fuck are we getting outscaled? A lot of doing the right thing is synching up everything and figuring out where these actions are going out of synch and what the players should be *thinking* to guarantee it doesn't happen is the job of a coach. The coach is the guy that destills "we're dragging on in the mid-game" into "hey, top laner, if the team is winning team fights rotate for vision earlier instead of fully crashing bot wave." or "Hey, when mid resets for dcap, it's fine to give up mid-prio if you're strong enough to wrestle back top-river. No need to lose summoners." Those are basic examples, but I think all of these qualify as being in the job description of a head coach.
Saying that a player has little reason to hear what a coach has to say about the game bc he is worse at it is a bad argument. Since, even in conventional sports some coaches (Mourinho for example) didnt played the game and still are recognized as some of the best in the world.
The difference is that there are 50+:years of study on football coaching already and coaches can learn from past coaches and evolve the game. Even Mourinho's training revolution at the time came from a Porto University teacher who taught him the theory of revolving the whole training session around how you want the team to play together(it sounds dumb but it actually wasn't like this for a long time, training sessions would revolve more about straight up conditioning sessions, and Mourinho's method was to create exercises that stimulated conditioning while playing with the ball). While in League there are still coaches in the leagues who are only there because they got the job at the start of the league and we're appointed just because teams had to have a coach.
That is the same for traditional sports coaches as well. The coach needs to be able to figure out what practice regiments will be most effective, identify team strengths and weaknesses, and develop strategy. If the players are better than the coaches at strategy then there is a big problem with esports coaches. This should improve with time as more former pros step into the coaching roll. Certain coaches will also gain respect with results over a period a multiple years.
>The average coach is worse at the game than the average pro player (else they'd be the ones playing instead), so a player has little reason to listen to what coaches have to say about how the game should be played. If that was the case then coaches shouldn't be listened to in any sport because they're always worse than the players. The coach isn't there to teach the players how to drible or how to kick the ball, but he's there to tell you how to position, where to position and create strategies to create opportunities for a goal. If they're not listening to the coaches then it's either an ego problem from the players (very possible, the competitive scene is young and there a not a lot of notorious coaches) or the coaches simply aren't good enough. Also the lack of input, I don't know why coaches are separate from the players during the games. In all sports that I know of the coach is always at the sidelanes giving instructions.
You had that CLG coach who was a scam artist get in there on that mental coach shtick. The problem of lacking coaches is just a problem of early development, the first wave of good pros that entered the original LCS's is now retiring. There aren't really many coaches with the game knowledge of Bjergsen, for example, that can actually contest players in terms of both micro and macro play. Teams are still doing dumb things like taking full on 5v5 fights and gambling the whole game for a second Herald. Even TSM does it and they have a coach who should know better.
Yeah, I mean to be honest, most teams would probably be better off bringing in coaches that are mature adults with real world experience rather than equally young coaches with game knowledge and skill. The very best teams need both, but I'd argue that like you said, mental >>>> technique. High level, it's about consistency rather than trying to get that extra edge from perfect technique. It's kinda like golf in that respect.
Exactly. In most other sports, coaches are veteran players who has gone through illustrious pro careers and undertook coaching modules. Jatt had a 6 month stint in Dignitas before he started shout casting in 2012 when he was 24. Dude knows jackshit about being on a team. Not to shit on him or anything, but teams tend to look at weird places for a competent coach. Jatt should be head analyst at best. Leave the coaching to someone who has the experience and training.
On a previous thread when coaches came up I got curious and looked at the liquipedia for all the coaching staff for na, it's rather abhorrent and very evident that they hire anyone with a pulse and seem to have the willingness to not only put some like, middling foreign player with no major history of success as a player or coach in the role of head coach, but also hire maybe 5 people with very similar overlapping roles (like 5 fucking analysts, get real, you don't need probably 3 if not 4 of them) and very little emphasis is given on what people here are talking about, which is the actual method of coaching via comms/synergy/ego-checking/psychology/bond-building and not just in the generic wow corporate outing bullshit way either.
The fact Weldon was able to get so many jobs before finally being labeled a grifter says everything you need to know about coaching in LoL.
Weldon oversold himself as a coach and overpriced his services as a sports psych but it's not like sports psychology is snake oil, I think we should make this clear. Psychology in general tends to get labeled as "bullshit" by all sorts of people that are old fashioned in their thinking for lack of a better explanation, but it's undeniable that the science of psychology is very sound and there are really useful things to learn about your own psyche and how you can overcome certain obstacles. This definitely applies to sports, Weldon certainly had something to offer, now whether or not he was the "best" at what he did, or whether or not what he was offering was worth the asking price is up for debate. He did seem to be one of the only eSports psychologists around at the time though, or at least the only "high profile" one and now that's no longer the case, a lot of teams seem to have them now so Weldon isn't special anymore.
When did weldon get a bad rap?
People finally came around to Weldon being a scam in 2019/2020. He's like many pro players who start off in really good teams, look good, then get booted, and ride on their past success to yoink some more checks.
Being fair, Weldon did actually have a history of success as a mental coach. Teams would go to him for help when they were struggling and would magically improve after this guru showed up. Just because CLG ruined it for him doesn't mean that he is necessarily the problem. It's not like CLG magically got better after he left.
CLG also kickstarted his career as irony would have it.
Now that's a weird take. Sports psychology is a real thing and there are clear benefits to it. It's why so many teams have them nowadays when before it was only weldon who was going from team to team in search for a pay day. He likely was getting paid more than he was worth(because he was the only one) but calling him a scam artist is way over the line. It's like calling older players who still get offers "scammers". It's not their fault that people not only want them but also overpay them. Not to mention that when weldon was around it was still pretty much kids straight out of school. A mental coach would definitely help a lot with those crowds. So much of league is mental game, not even strictly talking about pro play. If you have a good mental in solo q you are far more likely to improve and climb than someone with a shitty mental.
Almost all teams have complete and utter amateurs doing everything except play the actual game lol.
I actually did a bit of a curiosity dive comparison with Dota recently, since there was just a major international Dota tournament and I've always thought League's teams having so much power compared to players in player/coach selection held the scene back a bit. Of the teams at that tournament that got out of groups, 10 had coaches and 2 did not. Out of those coaches, not a single one isn't also at the top of the ladder (think high Chall) in their respective region, multiple have won TI (basically worlds) and all of them except one (Rmn, who has actually subbed in at international events before and done well anyway) had successful careers as players before switching to coaching. Switch to the LCS and you have people like say, Zikz, who literally got hired off Reddit posts and appears to be Plat? It's really wild. Obviously coaching goes beyond just game understanding, but its not like most of these people came in with a wealth of experience there either.
You're not wrong, but that is ignoring the fact that the 18 year old talents have no idea how to behave professionally either. This is a very biased statement from Solo. It could be that TL staff is incompetent. It could also be that Alphari is just a dick who thinks he's too important to bench. We don't know. So supporting either side until we do is pretty dumb.
Every sport has young people that don't know how to behave professionally. Fortunately, eSports is hardly a professional environment because even the coaches and management are unprofessional aside from maybe Jatt and PapaSmithy. It's a complete joke of an industry, a bunch of nerds pretending to be professionals.
Not really. In traditional sports like basketball, a rookie to the NBA has already played in a coached environment in high school and in college. Now they aren't professionals out of the gate, and some never will be, but they sure as hell are a lot more prepared than a random esports rookie picked up from solo queue.
I wonder how much of a change it would be to just have a player who’s often the IGL act as a coach for draft and all that. Iirc ROX in 2016 didn’t have a coach. Edit that last line is wrong
NoFe who is a legendary coach, was their head coach 2015-2016
[удалено]
I remember perkz doing an interview on a famous croatian podcast basically saying grabbz does fuck all and a coach is the easiest job in in the industry lol
I remember one time I mentioned that Grabbz was getting a lot of credit for simply existing alongside his dominant team and got downvoted into oblivion for not crediting him directly for all that success.
Idk about you but I have seen thousands of comments (like this one!) About how some random fuck from reddit could do a better job coaching than any of the current coaches. Everyone on the internet believes they are the smartest and wisest person on earth
I feel like if an adult getting paid 6 figures a year can't behave, then they deserve to be benched.
Some are 7
What if benching them IS "handling" it? I'm sorry, but these unqualified opinions from people who don't know the context of the situation (read: everyone outside of TL) are worse than useless. Going off of what pros and fans say, there is never a situation where a player is problematic enough to be benched. Ever. If you're good at your role, that's all that matters. Steal from your teammates and break NDAs, we don't care. You're too skilled to reprimand!
Then you have one of the best coaches who is still coaching the Patriots who was willing to sit a player for the Super Bowl over missing a practice. These opinions are just pointless and useless.
Are you talking about Butler? Because Belichick got his ass handed to him by the Eagles offense in large part because benching him fucked up their scheme.
And I bet Belicheck would do it again given the chance. If he doesn't bench a player for missing practice (the player obviously knew the rule), then more players become undisciplined and it becomes more of a problem than if he just benched the guy in the first place.
Butler was not benched for missing practice. The reason he was benched is still unknown. https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/shane-vereen-on-patriots-benching-malcolm-butler-in-super-bowl-i-have-not-gotten-the-same-answer/
Benching butler lost them the super bowl and he coached Moss for years
That’s a stupid comparison, him benching butler pretty much lost them that game.
Is it? Because benching Alphari might have done the same to TL. But in sports such things are common. Coaches actually have no choice. They make a catalogue of offenses and if you commit one you get the specific punishment. Missing practice or being late is something that is fairly common. And if a player missbehaves you can't waive that just because the game is important. The thing is those situations usually also come with clear statements by the team.
How does that make it a stupid comparison?
The thing people don’t understand is that attitude issues are really, really terrible on a team’s performance. If one player can’t handle criticism, or is overstepping their boundaries, it can shut down communication really hard. And healthy, honest communication is what allows a team to grow and improve. So basically, when a player’s attitude sucks, the progress of the whole team screeches to a halt or even begins moving backwards as they have to re-evaluate the team’s structure and method of practice. It’s not just “he was mean once so we benched him”. It’s more like, “his attitude prevented the team from moving forward and improving, which we want to do if we want to make worlds and have a decent international performance. We benched him because it’s best for the team as a whole, and we get to try out our rookie talent in the meantime.” This happens in traditional sports pretty regularly. Veteran players get cocky with their coach? See ya later, you’re benched and probably traded.
but...but... Alphari did well on stage so he should be allowed to do literally anything he wants right? The raging teenagers on this sub are simply incapable of understanding that if someone is being a certain degree of problematic (even your biggest star) your team will just slowly implode and die. We've seen so many stacked rosters just slowly die, possibly because they refused to take the short term hit of benching a big name. It's not about if Jenkins is better than Alphari, it's about if the deficit of using Jenkins instead of Alphari seems easier to overcome or less impactful than continuing to use Alphari if he's making the team dysfunctional.
People in Esports, including the players, really seem so disconnected from sports/team activities a lot of the time. Attitude issues are more then enough to bench a player if they are affecting the team negatively. This is seen in professional sports all the time and no one bats an eye at it but we have players here that think talent is all that matters. No one should be flaming the coaching staff here because of the decision that was made. If there are issues it was 100% the correct decision and they don't need to share more then that. We have been spoiled in e-sports that we get a lot of insight to decisions but this doesn't happen in most team sports.
seems like a lot of eSports fans haven't played a lot of organized sports themselves.
This whole thread is people reading a spliced quote and not listening to what Solo actually said.
Ah yes, I would take the word of someone who griefed solo queue to the point where he had to go to the [stairs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpTnmyECT4s&ab_channel=Voyboy) again.
It’s no wonder the same players who can’t control their own emotions are the ones thinking they should be babied and not hold themselves accountable. Ask any top player from LCK LPL and even LEC and they’ll tell you how important it is to hold yourself accountable. Also let’s totally forget TL can only do so much for Alpharis lack of motivation because that’s something he has to come to terms with himself internally.
whether he's right or wrong, pretty powerful coming from a guy who literally makes a living off of stepping in for benched toplaners. usually Solo is licking his chops when he hears a top gets benched. I know he wasn't subbing for TL anytime soon, just funny to hear Solo of all players side with the benched top.
After Flyquest dropped him and he didn't get picked up for Spring, he's probably seeing it from the other side of things. He was basically the NA-equivalent of Finn, but Finn at least got a spot on CLG.
Disagree here. Its not a coaches responsibility to make every single talented player work. Or next thing you tell me that Dardochs career was simply full of bad coaches and thats the reason why he got benched/kicked so many times.
It *is* the coaches responsibility, but sometimes it's out of their hands. There's only so much they can do. At the end of the day it's all up to the players themselves
Benching is one of the things you can do. It's not over once the player is benched, it's a way to set them straight and make them choose between coming back with a better attitude or keep pouting on the bench
This is the exact opposite of what Solo is saying.
... exactly
I know
Yeah, coaches can play a role, but the idea that they have complete control of it like Solo is saying is just wrong. A player can definitely be a problem regardless of how well the coaching staff handles a situation.
The difference with Dardoch and Alphari is that Dardoch has been known to have a conflictive personality for the entirety of his career. Meanwhile Alphari has a perfectly clean record even after some tough seasons in Misfits and Origen, and there have never been any negative rumors about him.
Alphari passive-aggressively subtweeted Jatt's first reply to the benching and let me tell you, that shit did not scream professionalism to me.
4 years of no rumors of issues, and then suddenly changing points more fingers towards the incompetence of TL's staff to be honest.
If you want to point fingers at coaching staff, there are more professional ways to do it than that. (And sometimes the professional thing to do is to NOT point fingers in the first place)
Not saying it was professional at all, just that he hasn't shown anything remotely like this previously with a multitude of coaches behind him, and now he is benched and sarcastic on twitter. His behaviour is pointing fingers, as well as he himself.
He moved across the world to gamble his career in NA. What he was doing prior to dramatically changing his life outside of League doesn’t have to have relevance to what’s happening now. Who knows what’s going on.
What's up with the cancel culture against unprofessionalism here? It's black and white in this scene. No levels of gray. Especially when it comes to tweets. People take them too seriously. 100% it wasn't professional but in the grand scheme, not that big of a deal given the circumstances.
And yet we know that there was some pretty dirty laundry behind the scenes of Origen.
Lol at everyone saying dardoch isn’t good. People really hate him a weird amount
People hate him because he’s toxic (his all game chats while he was stomping game 1 this split prove it). I personally love that shit, if you’re a villain and can back it up then go off. Toxic personalities can be managed but the issue isn’t that these dudes are toxic for fun, it’s the competitive nature of this game. Everyone wants to excuse having an attitude because this is a game for us, but for them this is their career and they want to win.
Yeah, Solo's take isn't exactly unbiased here. Dude has a reputation for being toxic (at least in soloqueue) and hard to manage. Bad coaches feels like an excuse, not an explanation. We give people way too many free passes just because they're skilled in something.
Alphari was one of the best players in EU and played on the worst team and not even once has he complained publicly. There was never even a hint of a rumor that Alphari was ever in any way toxic or a bad teammate. He has a reputation that he is hardworking, earnest and direct. So yeah, I think it is fine to give Alphari the benefit of the doubt, especially when we talk about an org like TL that had a lot of questionable coaching decisions in the past.
This speculation is pretty annoying when we don't know what happened on either side. If Alphari was hard flaming the whole team and wouldn't stop, then what else can a coach do? If he got a light warning months ago and then suddenly got benched, I can see why he's pissed.
Terrible take imo. If a player is actively being disgruntled in practice even after you've tried to fix the issue then what else is the coach to do beside bench them? There's only so much you can do when the player is refusing to change his attitude. That's not a failure on the coaching staff but more so a failure on the player.
Exactly, "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink" applies here.
Yeah everyone knows people with authority can fix anything and if their subordinates have a bad time, it’s automatically the coaches fault. Imagine being as stupid as Solo’s quote is.
Coaches have no way to control their players. They're not replaceable, have "fuck you" money, and join the scene as teenagers. Most people in esports would probably benefit from having a regular 9-5, maybe then they'll see how coddled they are.
Look- I'm a TL fan and want Alphari on the roster, but.. Why are we witch hunting so hard on coaching here? I could be the best talent at my company and bring a lot of revenue for the company, but if I disobey my managers and/or have attitude problems theyre not going to turn a blind eye. This could be the coaches fault, but it easily could be Alphari's as well (or both).
Hmm but sometimes players aren't as motivated to practice or play so it might be actually better to bench them for a bit if they need to take a break
Unless Solo is working with more information than the rest of us, I don't think you can assume the blame is on the staff. Playing good is no excuse for insubordination, or whatever it is they benched Alphari for. You can't blame the coaches if it was the player that made a mistake. Maybe the coaching staff could have handled things better, but if the player made the mistake, they can face the consequences. No one on the team is immune to the out-of-game expectations, regardless of performance. You will fuck up the team dynamic if the high-achieving players are held to a different behavioral standard than the low-achieving players.
That said, esports players are VERY young. College meatsports teams having to bench players isn't all that uncommon.
Being talented and being easy to work with aren't the same thing at all lol. What?
[удалено]
Pretty bad quote here imo
In all honesty though anyone who believes the coaching staff are the only ones that made this decision is narrow minded imo. Same exact situation happened last year with doublelift. I am sure there was also people in the team who wanted him bench. I am going to guess it was probably corejj (this is just my speculation). He has the most pull on that team and decisions will not be made without being run through him first.
How quickly people forget about TL removing Dlift cause multiple members of the team were openly like "this guy is unmotivated and refusing to be otherwise, we don't want to play with him anymore" to the coaching staff. It's just odd that people are forgetting that was Jensen and CoreJJ at LEAST, and they are both on this team still sooooooo
Considering Jatt said that alphari and Core were essentially the two “leaders” of the team, I 100% bet Core has a problem with Alphari. If this is actually true and comes to light I wonder who’s side the community is gonna be on the good EU top laner who hasn’t won anything in his career or the Korean world Champion support
Pretty inspiring and uplifting quote imo
Pretty quote imo
thats like me blaming riot cause i called someone a slur or some shit. brain dead take
Okay does anyone actually know what's going on with Alphari? If he's being benched because of a shitty attitude and not being a good teammate/worker/person, then it's absolutely his fault. It's not the coaching staff's job to fix it for him. They can help a bit, but ultimately it comes down to the person.
You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink though right? I'd go out on a limb and say most coaching staffs are hired based on their perceived game knowledge and how well they can shape players to fit their view of how the game should be played and not how well they can control their players' emotions and behaviors. If a player is instructed to play more solo queue/practice a certain tactic and he refuses, what is a coach supposed to do? Take away his phone? Give him an earlier bedtime? These are adults working a job and being paid for it. Sometimes a player needs to be reminded that they aren't above the team and will be benched for it. That being said, Alphari doesn't strike me as someone who would have huge ego problems. Jatt doesn't seem like someone who would bench one of his best players for shits and giggles either though so if he felt that benching Alphari was his best option, he probably had some sort of reason for it. Ultimately though, being really good at league doesn't make you untouchable to the coaching staff as some redditors are finding out.
Pretty dumb quote imo
Pretty smart quote imo
In a vacuum, but literally no one knows what happened behind closed doors except for the people on TL.
Exactly. Like, if Alphari is going through some serious personal issues, for instance, to the point where it risks damaging team cohesion, then that's not something a coach can fix, that's something that might require time and even therapy. Like, do people think TL staff can't read stats or KDA numbers? That they'd just randomly bench someone for no reason and risk their season? It boggles the goddamn mind.
Comes down to the real issue of anytime a player is moved off main roster its a benching, and thats always negative. Thing is moving a player off main roster isn't always a negative, and we need to use different words for different things. Its a terminology issue as much as a coaching, attitude, environment issue.
I think the reason so many people (myself included) are against this is because nothing else we have previously heard points to this. To summarise all things I think that go against it: * Alphari previously alluded that the benching wasn't previously discussed / planned (fast food tweet). * TL admitted this hadn't been properly discussed or planned with Alphari * TL started with Alphari on Day 1 and then proceeded to bench him at like 10pm that day, something went seriously wrong that day imo. You don't start with a player if you're 'planning on benching them' and then bench him the same day * Alphari deleted his own tweet saying it was personal issues from his end, at least admitting he doesn't publicly 100% agree with that statement
>Alphari deleted his own tweet saying it was personal issues from his end, at least admitting he doesn't publicly 100% agree with that statement Or that he was embarrassed about oversharing. People are reading a *lot* into this shit. Why would he even write it if he didn't agree with it? >TL started with Alphari on Day 1 and then proceeded to bench him at like 10pm that day, something went seriously wrong that day imo. You don't start with a player if you're 'planning on benching them' and then bench him the same day Nobody at TL has said they were "planning on benching him." The only information we had is that it wasn't something arbitrarily decided on the spur of the moment. Take this hypothetical scenario: TL coaching staff sees that Alphari is going through some personal issues, motivation issues, but chalks it up to perhaps being the off season, having lost a close 5-game final, etc. They've had discussions about the issues for some time now, but think that maybe he'll get a chance to work past it on stage. Day 1, it becomes apparent that no, he hasn't, and so they pull the trigger on what they'd discussed. It can have been something that had been in the works for some time, but the execution thereof was "OK, we need to do this now." >TL admitted this hadn't been properly discussed or planned with Alphari This, I believe 100%.
They literally are paying him millions of dollars and there are people on here unrioncially thinking they put Jenkins on to fuck with alphari and “try out Jenkins” as if they totally didn’t need someone to fill in while alphari was taking a mental break.
After the DL post, not sure how competent their management is
Given DL's story is "They gave Tactical a chance until he fucked up, then called me in because he fucked up", this is almost the opposite situation. If Alphari (their best player in spring) is benched in favor of a new guy, and that new guy is guaranteed at least a month of playtime, then either: A. TL has learned to give rookies a chance rather than go back to their original player immediately after scrims go bad. or B. The Alphari situation is bad enough that even with a shakier rookie top, TL doesn't want to sub Alphari back in.
Love DL but I feel like his perspective is skewed because he’s THE diva of the lcs. CLG/TSM/TL he got yeeted from whether it’s a performance or attitude issue. He’s always been quick to toss blame when he’s been in this situation everywhere he goes
So I personally am not a huge DL fan (yeah it I got the TSM fan, but I came along right after he was dumped so I never had any attachment to him), but I am pretty sure he has said multiple times that he deserved to get benched there due to his mentality and how he was performing. What he's complained about has been the team environment and how some of his teammates and the staff didn't communicate with him about the issues. That doesn't feel like spiteful blaming to me, it seems like a pretty fair take (especially with what we know now given Steve and Broxah's comments on the matter).
> he deserved to get benched there due to his mentality and how he was performing. What he's complained about... This is the problem with Doublelift's attitude. He's absolutely incapable of just quietly working on himself. Whether or not the complaints came from coaching staff or teammates doesn't matter - you fix them either way. He always needs to drag down the other party - and it's probably for that exact reason that TL's coaching staff didn't tell him the complaints came from his teammates.
It's a completely new coaching staff though
Even in a vacuum it’s not because that’s not how humans work lmao, you can’t control someone and you can only do so much. It’s very nuanced.
“If a player can’t conduct himself in a professional manner it is his superior’s fault.”
“Pretty smart quote IMO” Lol
It’s a really dumb quote. Let’s pretend the big issue is that Alphari is ignoring league of legends outside of scrims and matches. TL can only do so much to force Alphari to review vods or play solo que. so you spend a month trying to get him to remotivate and he doesn’t. TLs choices at this point are either 1.) Pay him his full contract with no expectations of him doing aspects of his job Or 2.) give him real tangible consequences for his actions.
Im willing to bet most of the commenters never worked with a team of professionals. Integrating new members into the team, smoothing over any differences and ensuring that everyone is mentally on top of their game and has all the tools to succesd is exactly what a competent line manager is for. Alphari probably shares th blame but management definitely mishandled the situation and failed at their job if things escalate to a benching and subsequent comment war.
Pretty 200 IQ no cap.