TSM under fire for finalized NACL roster ahead of 2023 season

TSM’s NACL is stacked with LCS veterans that have been on and off of LCS teams for the better part of a decade, and the League community is calling them out for not signing new talent.

It’s been a more than hectic off-season around the League of Legends world, with teams from every major region getting swapped around and imports galore, especially in North America.

TSM have announced their full 2023 LCS roster, with veteran talent like Huang ‘Maple’ Yi-Tang and Colin ‘Solo’ Earnest backed up by Lee ‘Bugi’ Seong-yeop, a player who is a veteran in his own right but a rookie to the LCS. It’s hard to know just how powerful this roster will perform on stage.

Meanwhile, longtime veteran talent has been signed to their Challengers League roster. Kevin ‘Haunzter’ Yarnell, Dennis ‘Svenskeren’ Johnsen, and Jason ‘WildTurtle’ Tran being on their NACL roster would give the team almost 30 years worth of competitive experience with those players combined. Meanwhile, fans argue that NACL teams should be for developing new players and not retaining old ones.

TSM rumored academy roster stacked with veterans

It’s important to note that community sentiment isn’t that veterans should be entirely excluded from the challenger’s league system, far from it. Players like Darshan ‘Darshan’ Upadhyaya have been in academy for years, and having talent on a team that brings years worth of experience can have some value in teaching up-and-coming talent.

However, as academy caster Mad Magical pointed out, issues come when it’s a roster that’s almost solely made up of veterans. With Hauntzer, Wildturtle, and Svenskeren all having around a decade worth of experience each and Stephen ‘Triple’ Li playing competitively since 2015, there’s certainly an argument to be made there.

Magical would go on to clarify that these players “deserve” to be in academy, but that there shouldn’t be rosters in a development league that is fully made up of experienced players.

This argument would get carried over to Reddit, with a post that garnered over 2k upvotes from user greendino71 claiming that “vets who have been around since 2013 or so shouldn’t be allowed in academy.”

TSM have since gone through with the acquisition of the rumored roster, signing the longtime vets to their Challengers League team.

The roster has certainly put the organization in hot water on top of some already controversial circumstances surrounding a partnership with FTX. Not to mention, these players haven’t been at the top of the LCS for a long time. Whether or not they can perform at that same high level remains to be seen.