From Team Liquid’s perspective, this LCS was a bit of a doozy. The professional League of Legends team’s worst enemy in the entire LCS ended up being not one of the rival teams they faced, but the morale of their own players.
Earlier this season, Team Liquid’s AD carry and resident star player Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng made numerous statements belittling the tournament as a whole, making it quite clear that he had no interest or motivation to play. Since he had won it so many times, why bother with the current split?
Doublelift received a great amount of critique for this attitude from other players in the community, as well as from the player-base of League of Legends. Once he was eventually benched, he changed his tone and issued apologies, accepting the blame and promising to win back Team Liquid’s trust.
https://twitter.com/TeamLiquid/status/1250499211512045568?s=20
But it seems like that trust was never fully returned. According to recent reports, Team Liquid has placed Doublelift’s contract up for sale. Supposedly, the team is very interested in having the player offloaded before the next Split begins.
The news was first reported by Travis Gafford, a former GameSpot reported with a reputation for accuracy in the League of Legends and gaming communities as a whole. Gafford doesn’t name his sources, but states that there are multiple different sources that are confirming the possible trade.
Doublelift’s contract still has six months left in it, which means that whoever buys him will only get a guaranteed six months of play out of the ADC before possibly losing him or having to negotiate another deal. This might be unappealing to most teams, especially considering the dark mark on his reputation from his attitude this season.
But in all likelihood, most teams will probably jump to have a player like Doublelift on his team. While his performance this season both in terms of gameplay and attitude was sub-par, he remains arguably the best ADC in the LCS, as he has for many years. Much of the fanbase, including LCS analyst MarkZ, believes that offloading Doublelift is a mistake and that the player doesn’t deserve such harsh treatment.
Of course, team chemistry is vital, and it’s unlikely that much of Team Liquid is excited to work with Doubelift after this season. Team Liquid even missed the LCS playoffs this year as they crashed out with a 7-11 record, which is an absolute reverse of last year, where the team won four consecutive splits in a row.
Whatever happens with Doublelift, all anyone in the community can really hope for is that he’s able to clear his head and give the incredible performance we all know he’s capable of giving.
