League of Legends analyst Alberto ‘Crumbz’ Rengifo gave his take on what’s going wrong for 100 Thieves as they continue to struggle in the LCS Summer split.
After an impressive LCS debut in 2018, 100 Thieves have had a difficult second season so far. The team finished dead last in Spring 2019, and after two weeks of Summer play remains winless with a 0-4 record.
The results come despite having a squad that, on paper at least, has more than enough talent to contend among the better teams in the league. During a recent interview with LocoDoco, Crumbz spoke on what he feels is going wrong for the team right now.
As a former pro player in the LCS, Crumbz can certainly speak with some authority on the kinds of issues teams run into, and his diagnosis isn’t encouraging for fans of 100 Thieves.
“I don’t know, they’re checked out, that’s what it seems like. You’ve got world class players, that very recently have accomplished things, and they’re not doing anything together. I’m telling you, this has to be coming from top down, it’s coming from within the team, every single aspect of it is just not being done right, because when a team is so stacked and is not getting results, you can be sure that there’s a lot of problems that we just don’t see.”
This wouldn’t be the first time that 100 Thieves have suffered from internal difficulties. At the 2018 World Championship, the team faced criticism for underwhelming performances while opting not to field former starting AD Carry Cody ‘Cody Sun’ Sun due to apparent internal difficulties.
Following the disappointing 2019 Spring Split, head coach ‘pr0lly’ also took responsibility on himself for the underwhelming results, stating that he “had a good roster to work with and couldn’t create a winning team.”
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Regarding the specifics of what was going wrong for 100 Thieves in-game, Crumbz speculated that they might have communication issues, with bot lane players Bae ‘Bang’ Jun-sik and Zaqueri ‘aphromoo’ Black not sharing a first language, for instance.
“They don’t seem to ever be on the same page at all. No-one wants to be helping each other. If you’re not friends and have a comraderie, when you see a fight happening in the bottom lane and you’re a top-laner that doesn’t have [teleport], you’re not gonna tell yourself ‘I want to make that walk and help them.’”
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It seems the organization is willing to take some fairly drastic measures in order to course correct, with mid-laner Max ‘Soligo’ Soong and AD Carry Bang moved down to the Academy team for the Week 3 matches.
If the team is to have any hope of repeating their appearance at the World Championship, however, they will need to turn things around fast, as failing to reach the Summer playoffs would mean the end of their season.
