Hi all,
There’s obviously a lot of attention on Doublelift’s feelings about TSM. Unfortunately, he has chosen a public venue to air this negativity. I wanted to make a post to share full transparency as to why we made some of our decisions around Doublelift and rosters in the past.
Peter is a good player and one of the best players of all time in NA. Although he is a strong player and leader inside the game, he is really challenging to work with.
2020 Off season:
Going into the 2020 off season, Bjergsen retired. After hearing the news, Doublelift was unsure whether he also wanted to continue to play. Therefore, we considered many options about what the future of TSM would look like and our intention and strategy was to rebuild our team.
After a few days passed, he reached out and changed his mind and told us that if we were to sign POE and any good support player, no matter what language they spoke, he would play. Otherwise, he would want to look at other teams or retire.
Because we still wanted to work with Doublelift, we decided to commit to a strong roster that he wanted to play with rather than using the year to rebuild. We committed to signing PoE and a substantial budget, were looking to sign Huni and were also looking to sign good support players such as Lehends, SwordArt, Palette, or other Korean supports.
As the offseason went on, the conversations with SwordArt were going well and we were in deep negotiations with him. While we were negotiating with SwordArt, we did tell Doublelift that there was a possibility the deal wouldn’t happen and he would have to play with Palette or other Korean supports as Plan B. Eventually we hit a snag and were concerned that there was a high possibility that the SwordArt deal may not actually happen.
At this time, we reached out to Doublelift about the other potential options including Palette and players in Korea. Doublelift then expressed that he didn't want to play with non English speaking players, including our Korean options, even though he was ok with such a roster earlier. He explicitly stated that he may not be as motivated if we had him play in a roster that didn't meet his standard of a fully english speaking roster. This was in November when every other ADC was locked and we were 4 hours away from transferring Lost to EG.
It’s extremely discouraging for both staff and players to work with someone who is constantly ambivalent about whether he wants to play or retire. Therefore, all of our staff and players collectively decided to commit to Lost. After a long negotiation process, we subsequently were able to secure SwordArt.
Peter also has this misconception that he was replaced both times solely by me, but in reality the decision is made collectively by the players and staff he works with day to day.
Even after SwordArt committed to TSM, we collectively thought that committing to Lost was the best decision at the moment as building around a developing player rather than a player that constantly flip flops on wanting to play would be better for TSM in the long run.
I hold no ill will nor am I frustrated at him specifically for being indecisive because choosing your career and where you spend time is a really important decision. But I need to prioritize TSM’s best interests long term and move on.
I hope this is a learning lesson for Peter as he’s gone through this several times in his career.
He is clearly the best or one of the best players in his role ever to play in NA, but despite his skill, he is difficult to work with and his teammates and staff on multiple teams in the past have chosen to remove him because of it. He needs to understand that every spot is earned, not guaranteed.
2021:
So why is he publicly speaking out against TSM now in this very off season? I’m assuming that he’s upset because we weren’t interested in working with him.
He was exploring his options and we were not interested in working with him for these reasons:
He’s always changing his mind on whether he wants to play or retire.
His teammates/coaches don’t like working with him.
If he doesn’t like you or doesn’t agree with your decision making, he flames you publicly.
Overall, I’m disappointed about this whole situation as I already thought we’ve moved on from working with Peter last year and I didn’t know choosing to not work with him this year would result in this post and his feedback about TSM on stream.
Either way, even if my assumptions aren’t true. There’s no reason why he should be flaming us publicly for not wanting to work with him for the 2020 - 2021 LCS season for the stated reasons in this post. In conclusion, we'll start taking steps to part ways with Doublelift.
