Why I love the 100 Thieves LCS roster
Yesterday, 100T announced their 2023 LCS roster, with the best announcement video of any NA org so far. The two GOATS of the LCS have…
Yesterday, 100T announced their 2023 LCS roster, with the best announcement video of any NA org so far. The two GOATS of the LCS have reunited with two of the greatest rookie talents the league has seen in years, capped off with a franchise superstar. As a fan of the LCS, I can’t wait to watch this roster play — and I can’t wait to watch them blow past community expectations.
This is just me ranting about how cool they are. Enjoy.
Milan “Tenacity” Oleksij
Besides looking like a runway model, Tenacity has been the premier top lane talent in LCS Academy for a year. This is a nascent superstar of top lane.
He’s got a flexible champ pool and an incredible trajectory of improvement — anyone familiar with him from Academy expects him to be in the top echelon of his role by the end of the year. Personally, I’m looking forward to the fact that Tenacity has a terrific presence on social media, as well as a personality that’s great for content. I’m loving that we’re finally seeing flexible, talented top laners come out of our system, but I’m especially excited that our new players are charismatic and refreshing.
Can “Closer” Çelik
The Turkish phenom jungler has stuck by 100T, and they clearly intend to make him the face of their franchise, especially if he keeps farming clips on Lee Sin.
In that sense, Closer has taken the mantle from Ssumday, and 2023 will be his third straight year in the organization — but without any of the 2020 GGS core he came over with. Closer performed incredibly well in 2022 (especially considering Abbedagge’s career low performance in the mid lane), but jungle as a role has gotten incredibly strong in NA for 2023, so his competition is stiff.
Søren “Bjergsen” Bjerg
The greatest of all time and the savior of North America, the bearded legend has arrived — and people need to put respect on this man’s name.
When Bjergsen came back from coaching, the expectations were impossible to match, and they became crushing as TL began to underperform over the course of the year. He was a top 2 (or top 3, behind toucouille) mid all year, and yet people still call him washed — he ran rings around the competition last year, and even though VicLa and Gori will be tough mid laners to face, Bjergsen will be at the top of his role.
Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng
The greatest of all time and the savior of North America, the eight time champion didn’t care much for retirement. No one else stands a chance — after all, everyone else is trash.
At this point, you’ve already figured out that I’m a Bjerg + DL stan, so I’m not even going to bother hiding it. For just about anybody reasonable, Doublelift is the only truly questionable piece of this roster, having been retired since a legendary failure at Worlds 2020. I could contend by talking about how hard he’s been grinding for months — as one of the top players in Worlds CQ — or about his synergy with the rookie prodigy in Busio. Instead, I’ll just remind you that doubt has only ever made Doublelift a stronger player, and he’s never been more doubted than right now. (stolen from Travis)
Alan “Busio” Cwalina
At this point, you’ve certainly heard of Busio: the five role challenger with the flashiest mechanics you’ve seen on an NA support, ever. Let me introduce you to NA Keria.
Busio was awarded the Most Valuable Prospect in Academy Summer of 2022, which means that while he’s not even the best support being promoted this year (Eyla is just too good), he’s expected to have the highest ceiling by next Summer. When Peter Dun came on NAmen, even he praised Busio significantly — despite just coming from a completely different development system. If Doublelift can work to let Busio exercise his skillset (meaning Busio gets to be the “carry”), this bot lane is going to be terrifyingly strong.
Fanfare for the fan favorites
For the sake of this, I’m gonna count Bjergsen as NA — he’s lived here for nearly a decade, and the last time he played pro in Europe, I was in elementary school. He’s a cornerstone of the LCS, and I think it’s absurd to say that NA fans can’t claim him as ours. With that, 100T and CLG are the only teams with 4 native players on their roster (I’d even count players like huhi as native, but that’s still only 3 for Golden Guardians).
Since CLG isn’t anticipated (by most) to be a title contending team, 100T is the most NA team that you can bandwagon for! Bjergsen and Doublelift basically built the LCS, and Busio and Tenacity just came out of the developmental system, so it makes sense that this team feels so genuinely “NA” to me.
I know people insist that Bjerg and DL are washed, that it’d be bad for the LCS if a couple senior citizens could kick it back up and win — and I’d agree if it weren’t so wrong. Teams like FLY and TL are built to dominate, relying heavily on superstar Korean imports, and as much as I love C9, Berserker is kind of the same. Winning against this field is nothing short of impressive.
Frame it how you’d like, but if the GOATs are washed, it means they’re getting carried by young NA talent, which is something we know is at the core of modern LCS fandom (see:Danny and jojopyun).
I could wax poetic about the ways this team will complement each other’s styles, or the way that 100T seems to be finally reinvesting in their content, and thus LCS. I could literally talk about this team forever, but I won’t do that because finals are coming up. I just really wanted to explain why I want this team to run away with this year — it would be fucking awesome as a fan of the LCS.