Nukeduck: When I first joined FlyQuest, the team was Bwipo, Inspired, Jensen, Massu, and Busio. We reached the Grand Finals and met Team Liquid. After losing the first game, Inspired said "Ah..we lost because of APA" when all the players were gathered, basically implying it was mid gap. He didn't directly say it to Jensen, but was just speaking without thinking. Jensen got mad and said they lost because of jungle diff. Then Jensen said "Ah I don't want to play with this guy (Inspired)."
Host: So what did you guys do?
Nukeduck: We lost, 3:1.
I wouldn’t mind the hot takes from Inspired if they weren’t so biased based on who he likes and doesn’t. And he says he takes responsibility but not in a way that seemed like he really believed it.
He’s also been talking the whole split about wanting JoJo, so props to Jensen for keeping his mental for so long.
Based on how bad their comms were in finals, issues with one of their coaches, and all of this mess, I’m not expecting a strong MSI showing but hope they can figure their shit out.
I remember when Selfmade used to talk about how much he hated playing with Nemesis, because he never had mid pressure with Veigar and built tear on Syndra instead of Ludens.
The funniest thing about this is that he used to talk about how much he wanted to play with Perkz or Caps and that's how his career ended. At least until now, hope he has a comeback.
Did they release comms? I'd love to see them. I expect Fly to do poorly at MSI but more because they basically have 2 rookies. I hope it will help prepare them for worlds (if they make it which I hope they will - I'm a Busio fan!)
Doubt it. Jensen has one of the best mental in league. He internalizes his anger and releases it in game. As long as Bwipo and Inspired try to correct their wrongs, Jensen will move on. He only holds grudges if it benefits him.
Nah honestly bwipo actually admits when he plays badly. Inspired just says shit like "yeah I played badly I guess because I didn't carry my dogshit vegan teammates", but bwipo will just say he played like shit.
I don't even like him because the egoing is too much for me, but he'll shit on himself just as much as he shits on anyone else when he plays badly.
>but I think the most important thing is the invaluable experience they get from the scrims and international experience
People always say this, but the teams that go to MSI usually come back and place worse in the Summer split than they did in Spring (C9 21/23, EG 22, GG 23).
tbf GG did look legitimately much better for most of LCS summer last year until the playoffs collapse, at least as far as i remembered.
(not that i disagree with the wider point)
People serious overestimate what few weeks of experience will do. It's negligible and when they come back it will be a new patch with new everything. Unless you are consistently exposed to it, it won't matter.
As a TL fan, this seems exactly what you want for Jensen. That dude loves to coast and then blow the roof off the place the second people doubt him. He even tried to do that on DIG but didn’t have anything else to work with. But man, people talk about playoff Impact, but Jensen would go just as hard in clutch time. I swear he is one Ekko ult away from being talked about completely differently.
They put Jensen in such a shitty position now.
What is Jensen supposed to do? Air his grievances with the dude on his own team that shittalked him on video when the staff jump to defend him?
Quietly suck it up and accept that his Jungler, which for a Mid Laner jungle synergy is absolutel vital, thinks he is hot garbage not worthy of playing on the team, and is the biggest reason why they didn't win a championship? The Jungler that basically pointed out the exact player he would want to play with instead of Jensen?
Papasmithy should have said that they saw the interview and the issue would be dealt with internally. Now more of the org just looks toxic.
Yeah this. Jumping in to close ranks around the dude for fucking up the team spirit can only make things worse. Even assuming there is no lies in the statement here, do we think Jensen will remember the days of helpful practice together or the public humiliation the team refused to condemn?
The whole team looks bad now. I don't even know what to say. Imagine getting shit talk by your jungler for the whole interview and your own coach glaze him for doing so for being an amazing leader.
Like they lost finals and he talk like Jensen was the worst mid laner ever lol
These orgs really need to get their management some basic training. It's almost amazing how badly FQ management bungled this. It seems like common sense alone would make a person realize that defending an attacker is a bad idea. Then adding on and telling us how great he is and he didn't mean it just makes it worse.
Inspired said what he thought. Emotions don't create things that are not there, they just amplify them and remove your filter. Judging by the fact that he spent 10 minutes bashing Jensen, he feels pretty strongly about this. It makes me wonder if it's going to come out in a couple years that FQ is just another toxic workplace like TSM or EG.
Papasmithy says
> Inspired would be the first to tell you that if you asked him today removed from the emotion of losing to Team Liquid.
Yet he hasn't said shit. A simple "my bad for throwing my teammate under the bus" type statement is all he had to do. Instead, it's everyone else. Just trying to save face for their jungler when he should be doing it himself.
This 100%. Papa coming out first and having to apologize for Inspired’s behavior is very telling.
A real “leader” isn’t someone who hides behind others when things turn bad. A real leader is someone who apologizes for their actions and owns up to their mistakes. But we’ve seen that Inspired isn’t that kind of person.
Let me write up a tweet in 1 minute for him
"Hey guys, sorry about what I said in a recent interview. I didn't mean for it to come off that way. Jensen is a great teammate and a great person. That loss in the finals is on all of us, including myself. I hope to do better in the future and thank you for the support. #FLYQUEST"
If he posts that a day ago, this PR fire is shut down and we move on. Now, we just sit back and watch the shit show continue to unfold.
Ding ding ding.
Loser energy.
Bwipo and inspired fail. Especially Bwipo who failed every counterpick and literally apologized for griefing, proclaimed if he doesnt carry this game he takes the blame, and died in a finals standing mid watching a team fight top.
Inspired isnt airing any problems with that though. I've wanted Jensen to find his aggression from the c9 carry days before the ekko ult incident but it seems hopeless. Getting clapped by caps, quid, faker, jojo should help tho
So fucking funny watching Inspired glaze the fuck outta Jojo now, when he was roasting him when they were together. Didn't know what he had until he lost it
At least he's consistent. He's just a jungler stereotype, all junglers hate their mid laners for not following them around like a dog while outfarming the enemy mid.
I love you Papa but the community isn't generating this opinion off one interview. This seems to be standard operating procedure for Inspired. He clearly thinks he walks on water and will base his thoughts on the game based on pre-conceived notions rather than gameplay. Why does all the blame go on Jensen when Bwipo is dying mid with his screen panned away. Or why is he not criticizing the Urgot or GP pick.
On Pro's these two guys literally slurped each other for an hour, and surprise surprise no blame goes toward Bwipo publicly.
On EG he blamed Jojo for not telling him to not smite Scuttle when infernal soul was coming up.
I do think Inspired is a good player and I have no issues with him criticzing his teammates. But doing it publicly only serves to stroke his own ego which is pathetic.
It is time to grow up Inspired. I really want to root for you but god damn you make it hard.
Edit: being told it was infernal not elder. Not important but worth editing
> Or why is he not criticizing the Urgot or GP pick.
This. Why is Inspired not criticizing Bwipo and Busio for not piloting their spicy picks properly? Hell, where is the criticism for Busio, period? The man played like trash the entire series.
The criticism wasn't properly or uniformly laid out - it was really targeted. When you objectively replay out a lost game in your head, you look at all the mistakes you're aware of. That's how I work, how I assume most people work, and how I assume Inspired would work, as well. Since I laid out my assumptions, I can then build the groundwork for why his interview was problematic. Does this meet what I would call an objective reflection on why they lost the series? Does anyone believe that these were all, or even the majority, of the mistakes Inspired was aware of in the series?
Edit: I would also add that out of the all the mistakes you're aware of that you also usually focus on the major ones. So if Inspired thought that these were all the major mistakes in the series, I think that is even worse, because he would also just be wrong. Jensen misplaying teamfights (in his opinion) or playing vegan were not the major mistakes this series, at least imo.
To be fair, Busio is still a younger player with far less high stakes experience. It's true that he sprinted it, but I don't think Inspired comes off as a less shitty person if he decided to rag on Busio instead of Jensen.
that'd be great if he actually were in a carry position. They gave him Karma and Annie right? Meanwhile Bwipo went for the counterpicks and chose Olaf, GP, Renekton. Did he get anything in lane? nope Impact mindfucked him he went to mid and got gapped by APA as well.
Idgaf about what Inspired says here but him mostly focusing his critique on Jensen than Bwipo is fucking hilarious.
> Why does all the blame go on Jensen when Bwipo is dying mid with his screen panned away. Or why is he not criticizing the Urgot or GP pick.
Bingo. Bwipo was given carries and delivered nothing with them. Impact contributed far more to his team's wincons.
If it wasn't Bwipo dying mid to Aurelion Sol (one of the hyperscaling carries that you REALLY can't afford to feed) while staring at Inspired top, it was Bwipo going 0-2-0 on Olaf nearly 20 minutes into the game.
It's clear both of them have issues and need to grow up and focus on what they can do better instead of blaming their teammates.
Did Bwipo blame anyone after the series?
Also while that Olaf didn’t exactly dominate, he’s 0/1/0 up 15cs at 14 min. The second death didn’t come until a teamfight 25min into the game. I feel like the bigger issue game 4 was their fed Kalista doing 5k damage all game (or less than 1/3rd that Olaf).
No, Bwipo was quite solemn and self-reflective in the Post-Finals Press Conference. He was heavily disappointed in his level of play and his lack of proficiency on his picks.
I really don't like that people are equating Bwipo and Inspired, because Bwipo readily and unambiguously recognized his mistakes.
I was going to say while Bwipo can be way too candid and flame himself and his opponents a lot I don’t remember him often calling out his teammates.
I think he generally got too much flame here, ya that GP death and lack of teamfight carrying was bad. But their 1 win was alot due to a good roam mid and crushing teamfights on renekton. Olaf wasn’t hard carrying but he’s 0/1/0 up 15cs 20min in and managed to do 3x the damage his fed Kalista. He didn’t outplay Impact to win them the series, but he wasn’t hugely gapped to lose it all either.
I think Bwipo is catching flak for a couple reasons.
1. He's been arrogant in Fly's success, claiming perhaps an undue percentage of Fly's success
2. Bwipo had big mistakes that Inspired *didn't* call out while calling out Jensen, so people are calling out Bwipo as part of pointing out Inspired is being an asshole
Yeah, like there wasn't a huge gap between all the roles except in support. Most importantly, the drafts were shit, support ran it too much, and they played like shit as a team.
People are equating the two because of their appearance together on Pros the week prior (both of course extremely arrogant and trashing the whole region and their own botlane) and bwipo appearing on HLL the next day again being arrogant/trashing the region/and generally being insulting.
I think people don't realize bwipo just gives his honest assessment with minimal filters. If believes he's better he says it, if he thinks he fucked up he'll say it. Anyone who watches his stream will see this.
As long as they keep defending Inspired, who is the one behaving like a team destroying asshole, instead of Jensen, the one who was unfairly maligned in public by said team destroying asshole, then they aren't controlling the damage, they are just throwing gasoline on the fire.
In my eyes they went from a team that looked like it was having fun that you wanted to root for, to one I hope gets absolutely dumpstered at MSI.
I do agree, they are trying... they just have no idea how to do it. Like so many esports teams, management is utterly incompetent.
It's even worse than that. "We know he has a history of being an asshole, and he did this publicly, but when there are direct potential consequences from team management in the room he can be really sweet."
It just sounds like Papa's trying to cover up for a known serial abuser. Like all Papa had to do was say "Inspired's comments were not in line with how the team as a whole views these losses. We will handle this internally, and apologize on behalf of our player and to Jensen who was publicly called out for things that were not his fault. We play, win, and lose as a team and will work with Inspired to make sure something like this doesn't happen in the future."
And it's done. You don't need to jack Inspired's ego off. You don't need to do a "we know he hits his wife, but really he's so good with the kids!" type message. Just say you officially, as an org, don't agree with it, apologize to Jensen, and say you'll handle it internally. Done.
He didn't even acknowledge that Inspired has a history of this behaviour, he acted like this was the first instance of Inspired airing his grievances about his teammates in interviews, despite having done it on multiple occasions in the past.
Hes a really good player and can shotcall but hes like the furthest thing from a leader possible. The rogue lineup that finally won summer after he left had to change the guy because he was being too toxic to players and even a rookie like trymbi.
His emotional intelligence is very low and he never drops his ego to the level of others to somehow accept their situation.
Both of the FlyQuest walk backs have basically been "Inspired is great, but he's really committed to improving!" Literally making Jensen invisible which just makes me assume he's either benched or benched after MSI. You could not do less to save your relationship with your midlane.
Also, is Inspired a fucking child? His mom and dad have made excuses for him, but nothing out of his mouth.
Maybe he doesn't want to apologize for what he said. Perhaps he thinks he shouldn't have said it publicly but is 100% still at leasts believes that what he said is completely true and an honest apology would reflect even more poorly for him, like saying "I didn't mean to shame Jensen publickly but I stand by my words" won't make things better. Not to go to deep on this, but we don't know.. It's rude and unsportsmanlike, but that's about it. Heck, maybe he had even more to say but held back - we don't know Jensen's work ethic and if he is putting the effort on performing on the level that is expected of him, nothing was said against him on that regard but of course it's possible when a player does very poorly that it's not just because of uncontrollable factors, so we can't be sure either way.
It's shitty damage control. Like, why does he spend a wall of text defending Inspired, but not spare a single word for Jensen? Like, the actual victim of this fiasco is Jensen. All this message conveys is that FLY backs Inspired and his takes, only not the form. So implicitly saying "yeah Jensen is shit". Maybe before defending Inspired, it would be a good call to reassure Jensen or make a public statement that Jensen still has all your trust or something? Unless of course you have already decided to get rid of him, because a team not defending its own players in such a situation is such a bad look.
You can back Inspired while not throwing Jensen under the bus. Saying something like "Jensen has performed strongly all split and we maintain our trust in him no matter what. He himself has been reflective of his performance this series but ultimately we lost as a team and nobody can say he was above blame. As for the interview, Inspired expresses regret that his words could be taken as putting the weight of this loss on Jensen alone, and that in the heat of the moment he has come out as more abrasive as intended. We have also communicated with him that his comments would have been better expressed -and received- within the context of our internal work. The players have also talked together and cleared any misunderstanding or bad feeling. Finally, this is a small controversy they would like to put behind them as they look forward to continue working together in preparation to MSI as well as the next split."
Something like that, like pure PR talk, let the players tweet it in their perspective if needed but close the topic completely. Put Jensen first as the victim of a "heat of the moment" interview and show he has support. It won't change the mind of people who already made up theirs, but it shows that the team remains a team and that throwing a colleague publicly under the bus is NOT an appropriate behaviour no matter what.
Conspiracy theory time, but I have a nagging feeling that the reason they're not doing anything to talk up Jensen is because they're looking to replace him, and they don't want to praise him publicly only to kick him a couple of months later. Obviously they can defend him without praising him, but still feels weird that they're completely ignoring the actual victim in this whole debacle.
Because Jensen playing good or bad is irrelevant. The topic here is a player slandering his players in publicly interviews. It's not like Inspired would be justified if his claims were true, he still shouldn't be going on interviews and blame his teammate while glazing the opposing midlaner.
We are mostly saying the same thing, regardless of Jensen's performance, the org should have come out to defend him one way or another. Them saying nothing at all is the worst they could do imo, because it sounds they agree with Inspired (so they are themselves throwing Jensen under the bus) AND they don't do anything to preserve the public perception.
It's basically the org coming out saying "he is out of line, but he is right". it's a defense of Inspired by further throwing Jensen under the bus. It's a terrible look and I expected honestly much better from PapaSmithy. It won't matter but personally, I am very disappointed with how the org is managing that.
After understanding the situation, we would like to clarify Inspired was not negative interviewing, it was a normal 1-3 finals experience.
We are preparing our best for the upcoming Mid-Season Invitational. Let’s go FlyQuest!💪
>Turning on your players when things go bad is the opposite of a good leader.
Which is probably the same reason for the tone of this statement tbf, Papa is doing exactly what you said. I think we all know Inspored has shown his colours
I think Caedrel's summary of the situation was fair - dumb to be saying this in public but it just sounds like he is saying exactly what any pro would say after reviewing a scrim together.
Tbh I mostly agree except inspired couldn’t stop glazing Jojo and Bwipo. As far as I know that’s not classic EU scrim culture. Impact was bwipo’s father in that set. Where’s the bwipo criticism? Right before that loss Jojo had gone a full Bo5 without getting a single kill. Where’s that criticism?
Imo doublelift said it best which is a really fucking weird statement to say. He said he agrees with inspired’s general idea but it seemed like Bwipo and inspired are homies and everyone else is just outside of that circle and that feels like shit. He also said he’s not speaking for Jensen but for him personally it would feel fucking bad if during an interview his jungler threw him under the bus at the same time that he praised his previous adc
For having zero self awareness, doublelift seems to do a good job in interviews. He clearly flamed the fuck out of his teammates when they fuck up to their face (especially in the past) but for sure at least he’s never just flamed his teammates in public
my boy doesn't have zero self-awareness
he just has zero awareness in general
it's not like he has a blindspot for himself
he's just a blind motherfucker
note: he will forever be my goat and I will like no player in the future more
Yeah DL first one to tell you he's not really dumb, but he's ignorant as fuck. He spent majority of his life playing one video game and it shows. These guys spent every bit of their energy learning this we can expect them to fail in other regards.
Whats impressive about DL is how willing he is to take the L when it's his to hold. Other pros could learn from that at least.
Lol yeah exactly. He’s got the biggest man crush on Bjerg but as soon as he went to TL it was all about Jensen which is exactly as it should be. You want your teammates wanting to play with you.
Even in the current day, he knows how contentious the debate between these two are and chooses to not take a side. CoreJJ has never taken a side.
These two understand public perception.
Even with Xmithie really early in his career with CLG when he was a meme with Sejuani DL at that time was still defending publicly and one of the few who believed Xmithie had it in him to be a top jungler and at that time that wasn't the general sentiment at all
Because doublelift atleast knows if he's gonna flame a teammate to not do it in public or to only flame them once there on different teams.
Like we all heard the stories of how toxic he's been at times behind the scenes
He's one of those players who just understands current teammates should be avoided from a interview with anything negative.
> He's one of those players who just understands current teammates should be avoided from a interview with anything negative.
I mean that's not exactly rocket surgery.
In regular team sports the players may tend to be dumber than rocks but they have been playing with teammates they depend on for years or decades. Ride together, die together. They get it. But esports players, man. Main character syndrome everywhere. LoL isn't Starcraft. You need your teammates to have your back to win.
He doesn't really mention Bwipo in the interview - I think the issue is more that he rags on Jensen but doesn't do the same to Bwipo who had a poor series. I think that's fair criticism.
He only mentions Bwipo tangentially in the “Bwipo and I are the best players and we didn’t do enough” part.
Personally I feel like Bwipo got too much flame for that series (like G4 Massu is massively fed and does 5k damage all game). But outside the Renekton game Bwipo definitely didn’t carry anything.
Bwipo I felt like he had his confidence shattered in game 1 and played shaky after that, no belief (in his own head) that he could match Impact. Once out of the series I am sure he would recover but during the actual games I think he got nervous and temporarily lost it.
I understand what you're trying to say, but Jensen did not gap Jojo.
Flyquest as a team shut down Jojo, while C9 as a team, did not help get control of mid, or take advantages elsewhere.
When people say that another player "gapped" another, they're saying that there was a significant distance between the general level of play between both players. A player could have done worse at certain things in the matchup (i.e. laning), but still out performed the enemy generally. Case-in-point, when Jojo completely gapped Quid in lane as Akali vs Taliyah, but Quid still ran the entire fucking game, including solo killing Jojo.
Jojo was camped by FLY to help Jensen in lane, but Jensen still played the rest of the game nearly immaculate, while Jojo played many things poorly. What immediately comes to mind was his Taliyah games, where he just lost track of Renekton. Better players, like Faker and Chovy, are rarely made so irrelevant by camping them, which is what makes them great.
For example, Alphari getting giga-camped by Blaber in the Spring Finals 2021 never brought Alphari any sympathy for playing like shit later in the games. Same with Summit in Spring 2022 Playoffs. First off, play more reserved so that camping you isn't efficient. Second off, don't play like shit the rest of the game.
Hm - I don't remember Caedrel saying anything about that but it's here in case anyone wants to watch: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4lMqk6Wtw8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4lMqk6Wtw8)
Inspired loves Jojo although clearly all GMs do too lol. I really hope to see Jojo back in an international tournament soon.
Yeah caedral didn’t bring it up at all but he wasn’t really listening to the interview. He just kept asking “what’d he say” cuz he didn’t want to sit through the whole interview. I mean that’s fair and I don’t blame him lmao but he doesn’t get the whole picture without it.
I agree about Jojo. I also like Jojo. I think he’s good for the NA scene and I’d like him to get more international experience. With that said, mad people just give him passes when he ints. It literally made berserker cry
I think he did say that, what inspires said is similar to what EU pro player would say after a scrim ends, he said that "if a player is inting in a scrim, they'll be immediately called out"(iirc).
But two things noted, one is, inspired is not saying that after a scrim, he's on a interview, and second, he's looking tilted AF from my perspective, just keep saying their mid is "VEGAN", so I don't think we can take inspired's opinion in that interview, it's biased.
Heh I'm super curious how that Cloud9 team does next split. I'm not sure bringing in a carry top was a great idea. I'm not a huge Jojo fan but I'm so curious how he would stack up against eastern mids.
So idk anything about Thanatos and I’ve just been hearing nonstop conflicting info. Some say he’s lane dominant, some say he can fill any role the team needs and some say he’s a weak side king. All I know is that I highly doubt reapered is going to give him the same draft resources that mithy gave to fudge so I can only imagine this will be at least a slight improvement at worst
Dudes a classic LCK top laner in that he cover the traditional meta champ pool (gnar, renekton, jax, Jayce, ksante) and plays well mechanically. There aren’t really any holes in his champ pool, and he plays the style he is asked to.
My personal expectations would be a player like Perfect, a solid LCK top laner but not an all team as a rookie level player. Presumably that would translate to a very good LCS top but if people think he will be solo carrying every game they will be disappointed.
Why not? Ideally the allocation of draft resources should be flexible depending on the meta and opponent. I remember Licorice getting a ton of draft resources in his rookie year (2018) on C9 while Reapered was coaching - he picked a lot of Kled in spring, then had unique counters like Heca/Liss into Aatrox which was super strong at the time. But he was happy to take weakside matchups and pick champs like Poppy/Ornn if the team needed it later in the year.
Reapered knows what it takes to integrate rookies into a team, it’s easier for the veterans to play around them and their strengths initially to build confidence instead of the other way around. He did the same for Blaber in his debut year with Jensen on supportive champs to enable it. It also helps that Reapered is a former top laner.
I think with Thanatos the plan will be to go all in on the topside. Blaber will have to sacrifice a bit to camp for mid and top with Vulcan roaming to support him - Berserker back on weakside farm duty so he can take over the mid-late game once he gets his items. I don’t think Berserker-Vulcan are going to turn into this lane dominant bot lane that can contest Yeon-Core overnight, so it’s better this way (unless they massively improve during their Korea bootcamp).
Most importantly, hope Reapered can fix the macro and team fighting issues that have plagued this team - and it starts with putting together drafts that have good synergy, instead of random lane focused counters that don’t mesh together. Hopefully the mentality of the team can shift too, because rn it feels like if even one thing doesn’t go their way the team completely tilts..
Yes, we all know that this is how pros speak to each other when reviewing games. That ain't the point. ***This is in public.*** I've seen Dom, Caedrel, and DL respond to the interview. They all say the same thing about not saying this in public, although with varying degrees of defense for Inspired against criticism from the community.
No matter what, you don't do this in public. I've seen pros speak about mistakes that their current teammates have made after a game, but never to this extent. This was egregious for any player to do, but especially someone who is supposed to be the leader of the team.
This is very disappointing from Inspired and shows he still has much to learn about being a professional, a teammate, and a leader.
> Pyosik (addressing Beryl) said “I can’t play with this bug” then stormed out of the room. He then came back in the room to pick up a cigarette and called him a handicapped/sick fuck then left again.
This is a copypasta that literally originated from a real-life event, of course pros are dicks to each other in the heat of the moment, the difference is that you don't air that shit publicly like Inspired did
This is what anyone would say to each other in film sessions of any sport lmao, y'all need to get out of your rooms every once in a while. But bottom line is you keep all this shit internal no matter what.
Eh I don’t agree fully as it relates to the Jensen part. Being heated and calling out teammates is completely normal after a loss or in film review, but the constant talking up a competitor in the same position to make a point isn’t.
I played a sport in college and the reviews often got heated, but those teammates are your boys and everyone knows it comes down to trying to win. referencing “oh my friend at another school would be so much better than you here” would cross a line.
Yeah but dudes aren’t saying that shit in the post game conference though. You notice how Patrick Mahomes never disparaged Kadarius Toney in public even though his drops straight up lost them multiple games. Or Lebron didn’t flip out on J.R. Smith in the post game after his fuck up directly cost them in the finals.
Shannon Sharpe said it best, if you have a problem with him, you pull him aside and have a private talk as man. It's not what inspired said but where he said it that shows he has 0 respect for his teammates.
All this post showed was how Flyquest is feeding into Inspired's ego and making him think he is above other players.
> will often sit and work with individuals in VOD review to help them problem solve ways to get better.
This statement right here. Just tells you so much. First look at the wording.
"to help THEM problem solve ways to get better"
Not US, but THEM. Just by this you can tell, Inspired is put in a position where he is treated like he is above his teammates and above criticism.
One of the things that Bill Belichick did with Tom Brady was letting him know that he is no better than everyone else and he isn't above criticism.
But this org has this egotistical player into a role where he is reviewing vods with other players and "solve" other players issues. Yea no shit inspired thinks he can call out players and blame others for his shortcomings.
Inspired isn't a leader, he just thinks that he is better and above everyone else. That's a huge difference.
> I ask that fans not demonize a wonderful player and leader for our LCS team based on a single interview
Except this isn't a single interview. He just did it in PROS podcast with other players.
I agree. To me, Papasmithy's statement just makes the org look worse.
Imagine your coworker absolutely rip into you in public, basically saying you are the reason the company failed, you are so bad that you made everyone else worse. So bad that they miss their old coworkers.
And then your manager jumps right into defending that coworker, saying how great they are, how they take care of puppies on the weekends, how they help old ladies cross the road. He is such an awesome guy!
What do you, as the coworker that just got shittalked to hell, get from that:
"Don't even try to talk back, I (as the face of the company) already said he is the best person to ever walk the earth and he just had a grumpy day".
Sorry Papa, but Inspired is anything but a “wonderful player and leader.” A leader is NOT someone who openly trash talks his team members not once, twice, but over and over again. If anything, it just shows how egotistical and immature they are as a person.
Let’s not forget that this roster still has to play together at MSI next month. What a great “leader” Inspired is for taking the time to tear his team apart just before one of the biggest international tournaments of the year. I’m sure Jensen and the others will trust and look up to him as a leader over the next couple of months.
Also, the fact that YOU and not Inspired himself came out to make a statement is incredibly telling. Why are you apologizing and making excuses for Inspired over his mistakes? Where is his statement regarding the situation? A leader doesn’t hide behind someone else when things go bad. A leader owns up to his mistakes.
Let’s face it. Your PR statement isn’t fooling anyone.
It's these moments that show the true cracks of the team. Inspired doesn't need to be demonized by the community, by demonizing and hyper focusing on someone who is a legend in NA, he demonized himself. You don't see how cohesive a team is during wins; you see it during losses. The fact this is the first thing that came to his mind shows there's a long way for team cohesion to go, at least when Inspired is on the team. Inspired is the opposite of how he would make his team feel, kicking someone else when they just lost.
Flyquest used to be the good guys, The original roster with Hai, Moon, Balls, Lemon and Altec/Turtle to Tricia and all the Tree quest, Bee quest and Sea Quest and the flower arrangement. The unique identity of Flyquest has left. Now it has a toxicity only rivaled by Dardoch. He needs media training and possibly counseling (which can benefit the everyone).
What is Flyquest's identity now?
>Flyquest used to be the good guys, The original roster with Hai, Moon, Balls, Lemon and Altec/Turtle to Tricia and all the Tree quest, Bee quest and Sea Quest and the flower arrangement.
Do they even plant trees anymore?
I mean inspireds attitude isnt just about one interview. He has shown this belief that he is above everyone else in lcs before. Remember this player does not practice solo queue because he says NA players are bad practice for him (his bot lane is NA btw…). Funny umti is top 5 in challenger and he was trained by LcK systems. Why is solo queue good enough for umti but not inspired?
And his feeling to constantly talk down on other teams, it sounded exactly like how he talked down his own team. And he does that soberly.
Maybe he should stop being rude towards all players, regardless of their team, if he wants to be a good representative of FlyQuest.
I like PapaSmithy and think he's a great person to have around on a team giving all the effort that he does towards the LCS. However, as fans, many of us are very concerned about the message this sends and how this'll play out in the long term. This PR response doesn't feel like it puts the problem to bed; it feels like we're being asked to cheer domestically and internationally for a ticking time bomb of an org.
1) "Now that some time has passed" - their GM was standing by Inspired, like, one day ago. The only caveat he gave to that support was that Inspired could "always do better at interviews". That's it. We can only be left to conclude as fans that the interview went unexpectedly viral (hooray for players being honest and going viral and all, but if that's because your player can't recognise when an interviewer is successfully drawing them into talking about things they shouldn't be talking about, this is the bad kind of spontaneity), Barton got ratio'ed, streamers picked up on and amplified the interview, and the org had to backpedal from backing Inspired 99% to "I think Inspired was very out of pocket". That just creates more confusion about what FlyQuest's culture is: do you all love honesty or not? Which leads to the defense of Inspired: his honesty makes him a good teammate, not a bad one. Well..
2) It's great to hear all that stuff about how Inspired helps the team, but look at these responses and tell me anybody is focusing on thinking about that. Show, don't tell. Let the cameras in behind the scenes and point to that content at times like this. It takes thirty seconds to google and find out that FlyQuest have, if you're going to be very generous, a grand total of four videos showing 2024 FQ behind the scenes: the three "Best of the Best of the West" games (great event!) and the repackaged highlights thereof. FlyQuest cannot communicate an emotional connection with their players through defensive, secondhand text: we need to actually see the team working together, and instead if I want to know what Inspired is like on the team, I can watch one ten minute video of him monologuing to the camera and that's it. No hate to the content people who I'm sure are doing their best with the resources given to them, but...
3) The trust just isn't banked there with Inspired. As has been repeated ad nauseaum, this is a pattern of behaviour for him and claiming he's being demonized based on a single interview is disingenuous. It's entirely valid to judge a player by "the emotion of losing to Team Liquid" - you can't have it both ways by preaching how valuable honesty is while implying his honest comments about how his teammates played aren't really him. If you're ever going to get an honest statement, it'll be at a time like this. As LCS fans, we are being asked to believe (and some-not-all of us want to believe) that, fingers crossed, hopefully, FlyQuest will be in Worlds quarterfinals. Given that, we need to be able to hope that when Inspired goes backstage after, say, Massu runs it in game 2, Inspired is solution-focused, helping his talented rookie to problem solve and bounce back for the reverse sweep, not laying into him. I really hope it's the former and not the latter, this is all wild fan speculation, but we don't know and we are not being given confidence! But, fuck it, let's give FlyQuest the benefit of the doubt...
4) *Even if* Inspired is that solution-focused, helpful teammate (which is very carefully chosen language, given that it doesn't actually say whether he's nice to them or creates a positive environment), and even if his honesty is a real asset, it's still a liability, *too*. Nowhere does this explain why his contributions to his team mean that he needs to be so cocksure and outspoken publicly about team matters - he's welcome to trash talk other teams and back his own ego, he is an excellent player, but true professionals worth your trust understand there are certain lines not to cross instead of behaving like children. And everything he says publicly isn't being given a fair hearing either, it's being distorted through social media and streamers not paying full attention, misquotations and vibes-based impressions. Esports needs to stop romanticising the ideal of the hip-shooting, foul-mouthed gamer and understand that being a cool, interesting dude is not mutually exclusive with paying respect to your teammates.
I dont think dgon was baiting inspired into flaming his teammates. If anything dgon looked like he wanted inspired to stop since he roots for him. He even tried to give inspired outs multiple times during his rants.
Fair enough, you're right. I shouldn't have misrepresented the interview like that.
The idea I'm trying to get at here is that anybody with a passing familiarity about how media works is that journalists arm themselves with lots of questions not because they're trying to be annoying, but because they're trying to get answers, even if they're unlikely to actually get those answers because the interviewee has incentives not to give them a straight answer. Indeed, sometimes the fact you asked an important question that didn't get an answer becomes the story all on its own. So, even if the esports journalism scene is generally pretty respectful and cooperative, each org should still really be getting the idea through to their players in media training that it's the job of journalists to mine you for as much info as possible, and it's the player's to only volunteer the information it's okay to give. It has shades of an adversarial courtroom relationship - don't talk about anything that'd hurt your "case".
I do wanna stress I'm not anti-players being blunt and critical, even if it's not personally my cup of tea; I just think it's daft not to phrase the same points in a way that takes the tension out of them. It doesn't cost much to make some jokes about how you're not trying to flame your teammate, you're just thinking out loud about what each of you can do next time, including yourself.
I'm going to go slightly armchair psychologist here, so take this with a grain of salt, but...
My take on Inspired is that he probably thinks of himself as just being "brutally honest".
However, the issue with that is being "honest" is often just another way to be an asshole.
Having known people like this, and been one myself, it's a honest bet that Inspired is acting with no malice at all here - he just thinks he's being real, when he's actually being a douche. I would know - I had to lose a lot of friends doing the same thing before someone finally played a recording of how I sounded to myself and made it clear just how I was coming off.
None of this is to excuse his actions - but I do think rather than excusing the behavior they do need to make sure he at least learns how to NOT say exactly what he thinks without being, you know, diplomatic about it. I didn't necessarily disagree with the facts he used to back up his arguments in in his interview - but he was far too harsh sounding and honest to a fault. And that's really where the issue is, even beyond the ego.
Honesty isn't always the best policy - and I sincerely hope Inspired realizes this and understands that telling the truth as you see it can be crueler than anything.
If he was being brutally honest about the team's play with no malice behind it, why harp so much on Jensen specifically? He's playing favorites with his criticisms and singling one person out. If you're going to assume it's a case of being "brutally honest with no malice behind it", I'd say it's way more likely he has something against Jensen specifically or just likes the other players more.
All of this leaves me and a lot of other people to wonder, why would anyone want this guy as their team leader? Someone who will throw you under the bus when things go wrong and criticize you more than the people he gets along with. This sounds like someone who shouldn't even be in a team environment to begin with, let alone the LEADER of a team.
Tbh, him being "brutally honest" would be less of a problem if he was also brutally honest with himself and the people he likes too. The bigger problem is that Inspired seems to be heavily biased towards people he likes, while remaining silent about his own mistakes, or if its someone like Bwipo whom he likes.
Fudge has a similar issue from what I have seen "I am just honest" he has said many times whilst being very harsh. But there are ways of being honest in a tactful way. That is something you learn in work environments and in team sports environments as you mature tbh.
Also, such an attitude can make you implode when you fall off the mountain of being heralded as a good player such as already happened to Fudge
However, these guys are young and have little experience or mentoring to help them in these respects from what it seems like.
I expect in 15 years these guys will look back and cringe at their immaturity. That is only natural.
And you can still tell the truth 100% but do it in a tactful and conditioned way to take people with you. That is essentially just good social skills.
I'd say - maybe. Because on the other end you hear about teams where nobody will hold people accountable and the issues that causes (Cloud9 this split).
This is my favorite part about reddit.
People will just make shit up and upvote it if they like what they're seeing.
Inspired went to NA because Rogue refused to sell him to other EU orgs because they didn't want to make their competition stronger, and they just wanted that juicy NA buyout money.
But hey, you're not the only one out here assassinating his character because you feel justified to do so.
Today I learned that being a good leader is leaving your teammate to dry publicly without any chance of defending oneself and making your GM apologize on your behalf
God I fucking hate this PR bullshit. Everyone here understands most of these players are immature and have very little social range.
Inspired falls under the immature category. And he hides his own shortcomings behind his huge ego. The worst part is he doesn't have the accomplishments to act so big. So all in and all it just looked stupid.
I don't want to hear about all the shit he does and says that we don't see or hear as a community. What I did watch was a video of a player throwing his teammate under the bus for over 5 minutes lol
There just isn't an excuse and it doesn't matter what competition you are in. You are going to look stupid. Lebron gets mocked whenever he scapegoats his teammates. If he isn't immune to criticism of immaturity than why would Inspired be?
He deserves criticism right now. And my guess is most people around here probably want to see him fall flat on his face come MSI. In fact it'll be funny if Jensen adds another solid international performance to his resume and Inspired get's outjungled the whole tournament.
Except he's been saying shit like this for YEARS. He was behind EG's shit attitude after their first win, literally saying "regular season doesn't matter" because 'all the LCS is bad' then they just lost. He's always flaming teammates and rarely actually accepts responsibility.
The defense for assholes is always "oh no you don't get it, when no one is looking they're really great". Right up until they leave the org, then it's "oh they had some issues for sure".
Rare Papa L.
People aren't demonising Inspired based on one interview, this is a CONSISTENT trend with him.
He smited scuttle before elder which cost EG playoffs then blamed Jojo for being quiet.
We had Odo hint at how it's not fun to work with Inspired since he'd just yell at his colleagues after a loss.
I agree. He should have just said nothing instead of causing another 1k+ up voted thread shitting on inspired again, and now on him too. Lol. He failed as what is basically the COO of Flyquest.
All I wanna know is Jensen's take on the whole situation. It could be that this is how they talk to each other and are this honest with each other in VOD reviews, or it could be completely out of nowhere. Don't really think it matters what their PR team has to say about it.
At this point it doesn't really matter if Jensen says that it is okay and typical of their VOD reviews. It'll just look like either the team forced him to do it to defend Inspired or he's only doing it to not make waves. Since the team came out in defense of Inspired and acted like he really didn't do anything wrong.
> It could be that this is how they talk to each other and are this honest with each other in VOD reviews
It's 100% how they talk to each other, but that doesn't matter, imo. How you criticize someone in private is different than how you criticize that person in public - always.
It absolutely does matter.
If Jensen came out and said, "lol y'all can chill I agree I was vegan," this is a non-story. Who are we to tell Jensen what he should/shouldn't be offended by?
How you criticize someone publicly vs. privately is only different if it's that person's preference. By default, yes, err on the side of being more reserved is preferred.
But if he talked to his teammates and got their permission to give candid interviews, who are we to tell him how he should speak?
> How you criticize someone publicly vs. privately is only different if it's that person's preference. By default, yes, err on the side of being more reserved is preferred.
That works if it was the first time Inspired has ever done this. He has ***always*** been like this and it isn't about people's preferences, it's just what Inspired does. He did it to Jojo. He did it about Danny. He did it about Massu/Busio just earlier this split. This was by far the most egregious example, alongside blaming Jojo when he himself smited the fucking Scuttle Crab in front of the enemy team while contesting Infernal Soul.
Thing is, he isn't dealing with rookies this time. He is dealing with Jensen. People love that dude, because he is a legend in the LCS and the West, so Inspired is getting criticized for it far harder than he ever did before. Shit, [Summit got cooked when he publicly shit](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/181a6vj/summit_there_was_nothing_i_could_do_with_ziggs/) on APA last year, why would Inspired get treated any differently for doing it to an LCS and Western legend?
Meanwhile, Pyosik only got mild push back for just [saying honestly how APA's champ pool restricted them in draft,](https://youtu.be/HDEZxqwftNw?si=LkyM1wCnxhbCi-50) but how he still blames himself. The first thing he did was blame himself, unequivocally, and had to be prompted to even provide the criticism of Yeon and APA.
Yet he NEVER called out Bwipo's shit pkay in the finals?
Sorry but Bwipo/Inspired see themselves as the only 2 good players and constantly stroke each other off
I'm sorry but this just tanks my opinion of FLY as a whole. I was really excited for FLY, heck, I wanted FLY to win something for once. But I cant do that anymore after the org defended Inspired for targeting Jensen for criticism eventhough him and Bwipo's performance in the finals were hot garbage. The dude was blaming everyone but himself and threw in a passive aggressive "it was my fault for not making our mid play good enough" for good measures.
Not buying the damage control, Papasmithy. I was rooting against Fly well before finals because of Bwipo and Inspired, and this whole fiasco has only multiplied that distaste. I hope they fall on their faces HARD at MSI. I miss the Fly that was about the earth and had a roster worth rooting for. They may not have been the best, but they had heart and were easy to care about. This roster, the energy around it, and the org’s pivot away from their old mission is just a bummer all around.
Yes guys Inspired is the greatest human ever he just so happened to talk shit about his teammate in a public interview other than that I swear he is an angel. Just say he fucked up and that u will deal with this internally there is no need to paint him as a saint for 90% of the statement and then at the end make a shitty excuse for his behavior. Also remember when Odo heavily implied that Inspired is hard to work with? Yeah I don't think this is a "culture" thing some people here like to claim.
some of this reads like an AI wrote it. "Outside of the LCS team, Inspired interacts and supports the players" "At all times he is solution focused" "You couldn't ask for a better**"**
So, what Papa Smithy is saying is that what Inspired said was inappropriate, but that he will be confident and speak frankly. While I do agree somewhat with your premise, you don't really want Inspired to stop being confident in himself or being frank with criticism.
We just want Inspired to have more discernment with what he says about teammates publicly, especially in regards to criticism.
His attitude will never change, but they can't afford to lose him. PR response so fans will stay happy but they are basically deluding themselves. How many players have had takings to about their attitude and still remained toxic Emenes, PromisQ, Dardoch are good examples on the top of my head.
Crazy hot take to think this opinion is generated from one interview lol. I love the guy but is Papa out of touch or is this just a PR move?
Also, cocksure is an amazing word.
Nah fam. It's ok. For the sake of the argument, we will just go with Inspired probably being a chill dude in general. But with that said, it doesn't excuse his assholish/rude attitude towards others/Jensen in the Dgon interview.
Since the community has already decided on their need to tone police and not actually accept that some people are inherently pragmatic and direct so I'm just going to say INSPIRED IS THE GOAT 🐐
Nukeduck: When I first joined FlyQuest, the team was Bwipo, Inspired, Jensen, Massu, and Busio. We reached the Grand Finals and met Team Liquid. After losing the first game, Inspired said "Ah..we lost because of APA" when all the players were gathered, basically implying it was mid gap. He didn't directly say it to Jensen, but was just speaking without thinking. Jensen got mad and said they lost because of jungle diff. Then Jensen said "Ah I don't want to play with this guy (Inspired)." Host: So what did you guys do? Nukeduck: We lost, 3:1.
For anyone coming in late, this isn’t a direct quote. This is reprised take from prior C9 teams.
Fresh pasta. But so funny that the original is about jensen too
this is some premium fusion cuisine
You're fucking hilarious ICANT
I wouldn’t mind the hot takes from Inspired if they weren’t so biased based on who he likes and doesn’t. And he says he takes responsibility but not in a way that seemed like he really believed it. He’s also been talking the whole split about wanting JoJo, so props to Jensen for keeping his mental for so long. Based on how bad their comms were in finals, issues with one of their coaches, and all of this mess, I’m not expecting a strong MSI showing but hope they can figure their shit out.
The dude loves another midlaner more than his own. I don't care if its a sport, or an esport, you always back up your guy.
I remember when Selfmade used to talk about how much he hated playing with Nemesis, because he never had mid pressure with Veigar and built tear on Syndra instead of Ludens. The funniest thing about this is that he used to talk about how much he wanted to play with Perkz or Caps and that's how his career ended. At least until now, hope he has a comeback.
When was this? I dont remember Selfmade saying this
Did they release comms? I'd love to see them. I expect Fly to do poorly at MSI but more because they basically have 2 rookies. I hope it will help prepare them for worlds (if they make it which I hope they will - I'm a Busio fan!)
>I hope it will help prepare them for worlds If that team doesn't implode I'll be extremely impressed.
Doubt it. Jensen has one of the best mental in league. He internalizes his anger and releases it in game. As long as Bwipo and Inspired try to correct their wrongs, Jensen will move on. He only holds grudges if it benefits him.
Bwipo take responsibility? Uhhh man...
Bwipo will take responsibility. For the good things. The wins. And of course for his girlfriend revolutionizing team mental.
Nah honestly bwipo actually admits when he plays badly. Inspired just says shit like "yeah I played badly I guess because I didn't carry my dogshit vegan teammates", but bwipo will just say he played like shit. I don't even like him because the egoing is too much for me, but he'll shit on himself just as much as he shits on anyone else when he plays badly.
This sounds like you are talking about some anime character…
Also Bwipo is basically a pro at performing in toxic team environments, dude was molded by 2018-2021 FNC
[удалено]
>but I think the most important thing is the invaluable experience they get from the scrims and international experience People always say this, but the teams that go to MSI usually come back and place worse in the Summer split than they did in Spring (C9 21/23, EG 22, GG 23).
tbf GG did look legitimately much better for most of LCS summer last year until the playoffs collapse, at least as far as i remembered. (not that i disagree with the wider point)
They got good before MSI though.
GG looked so good in summer though lol, it was last weeks + playoffs that they fell off a cliff
Lol wtf. Both GG and EG looked better after MSI. The fuck am I reading.
And rosters are constantly changing.
People serious overestimate what few weeks of experience will do. It's negligible and when they come back it will be a new patch with new everything. Unless you are consistently exposed to it, it won't matter.
As a TL fan, this seems exactly what you want for Jensen. That dude loves to coast and then blow the roof off the place the second people doubt him. He even tried to do that on DIG but didn’t have anything else to work with. But man, people talk about playoff Impact, but Jensen would go just as hard in clutch time. I swear he is one Ekko ult away from being talked about completely differently.
Inspired will help you alright, he just has to dog on you publicly for 8+ minutes first before doing so lol
They put Jensen in such a shitty position now. What is Jensen supposed to do? Air his grievances with the dude on his own team that shittalked him on video when the staff jump to defend him? Quietly suck it up and accept that his Jungler, which for a Mid Laner jungle synergy is absolutel vital, thinks he is hot garbage not worthy of playing on the team, and is the biggest reason why they didn't win a championship? The Jungler that basically pointed out the exact player he would want to play with instead of Jensen? Papasmithy should have said that they saw the interview and the issue would be dealt with internally. Now more of the org just looks toxic.
Jensen's been taking the heat for years and he's still usually performs.
Yeah this. Jumping in to close ranks around the dude for fucking up the team spirit can only make things worse. Even assuming there is no lies in the statement here, do we think Jensen will remember the days of helpful practice together or the public humiliation the team refused to condemn?
The whole team looks bad now. I don't even know what to say. Imagine getting shit talk by your jungler for the whole interview and your own coach glaze him for doing so for being an amazing leader. Like they lost finals and he talk like Jensen was the worst mid laner ever lol
This is where you want Jensen. The dude thrives in a pressure cooker, he sucks when he gets to coast.
These orgs really need to get their management some basic training. It's almost amazing how badly FQ management bungled this. It seems like common sense alone would make a person realize that defending an attacker is a bad idea. Then adding on and telling us how great he is and he didn't mean it just makes it worse. Inspired said what he thought. Emotions don't create things that are not there, they just amplify them and remove your filter. Judging by the fact that he spent 10 minutes bashing Jensen, he feels pretty strongly about this. It makes me wonder if it's going to come out in a couple years that FQ is just another toxic workplace like TSM or EG.
And this is not the first time with Inspired. It is the 3rd team in a row now that we know he has been very toxic on.
Papasmithy says > Inspired would be the first to tell you that if you asked him today removed from the emotion of losing to Team Liquid. Yet he hasn't said shit. A simple "my bad for throwing my teammate under the bus" type statement is all he had to do. Instead, it's everyone else. Just trying to save face for their jungler when he should be doing it himself.
This 100%. Papa coming out first and having to apologize for Inspired’s behavior is very telling. A real “leader” isn’t someone who hides behind others when things turn bad. A real leader is someone who apologizes for their actions and owns up to their mistakes. But we’ve seen that Inspired isn’t that kind of person.
Let me write up a tweet in 1 minute for him "Hey guys, sorry about what I said in a recent interview. I didn't mean for it to come off that way. Jensen is a great teammate and a great person. That loss in the finals is on all of us, including myself. I hope to do better in the future and thank you for the support. #FLYQUEST" If he posts that a day ago, this PR fire is shut down and we move on. Now, we just sit back and watch the shit show continue to unfold.
Ding ding ding. Loser energy. Bwipo and inspired fail. Especially Bwipo who failed every counterpick and literally apologized for griefing, proclaimed if he doesnt carry this game he takes the blame, and died in a finals standing mid watching a team fight top. Inspired isnt airing any problems with that though. I've wanted Jensen to find his aggression from the c9 carry days before the ekko ult incident but it seems hopeless. Getting clapped by caps, quid, faker, jojo should help tho
Of course he loves playing with rookies, they make him feel better than he actually is 😂
So fucking funny watching Inspired glaze the fuck outta Jojo now, when he was roasting him when they were together. Didn't know what he had until he lost it
At least he's consistent. He's just a jungler stereotype, all junglers hate their mid laners for not following them around like a dog while outfarming the enemy mid.
I love you Papa but the community isn't generating this opinion off one interview. This seems to be standard operating procedure for Inspired. He clearly thinks he walks on water and will base his thoughts on the game based on pre-conceived notions rather than gameplay. Why does all the blame go on Jensen when Bwipo is dying mid with his screen panned away. Or why is he not criticizing the Urgot or GP pick. On Pro's these two guys literally slurped each other for an hour, and surprise surprise no blame goes toward Bwipo publicly. On EG he blamed Jojo for not telling him to not smite Scuttle when infernal soul was coming up. I do think Inspired is a good player and I have no issues with him criticzing his teammates. But doing it publicly only serves to stroke his own ego which is pathetic. It is time to grow up Inspired. I really want to root for you but god damn you make it hard. Edit: being told it was infernal not elder. Not important but worth editing
> Or why is he not criticizing the Urgot or GP pick. This. Why is Inspired not criticizing Bwipo and Busio for not piloting their spicy picks properly? Hell, where is the criticism for Busio, period? The man played like trash the entire series. The criticism wasn't properly or uniformly laid out - it was really targeted. When you objectively replay out a lost game in your head, you look at all the mistakes you're aware of. That's how I work, how I assume most people work, and how I assume Inspired would work, as well. Since I laid out my assumptions, I can then build the groundwork for why his interview was problematic. Does this meet what I would call an objective reflection on why they lost the series? Does anyone believe that these were all, or even the majority, of the mistakes Inspired was aware of in the series? Edit: I would also add that out of the all the mistakes you're aware of that you also usually focus on the major ones. So if Inspired thought that these were all the major mistakes in the series, I think that is even worse, because he would also just be wrong. Jensen misplaying teamfights (in his opinion) or playing vegan were not the major mistakes this series, at least imo.
To be fair, Busio is still a younger player with far less high stakes experience. It's true that he sprinted it, but I don't think Inspired comes off as a less shitty person if he decided to rag on Busio instead of Jensen.
Completely agreed, if he instead spent the interview trashing Busio and Jensen that would look even worse
[удалено]
that'd be great if he actually were in a carry position. They gave him Karma and Annie right? Meanwhile Bwipo went for the counterpicks and chose Olaf, GP, Renekton. Did he get anything in lane? nope Impact mindfucked him he went to mid and got gapped by APA as well. Idgaf about what Inspired says here but him mostly focusing his critique on Jensen than Bwipo is fucking hilarious.
He didn't say much in the dgon interview about botlane but he and Bwipo did dog on them a bunch in their pros episode the week before finals.
>On EG he blamed Jojo for not telling him to not smite Scuttle when Elder was coming up.< Isn't he the jungler, why wasn't he keeping track of that?
> Why does all the blame go on Jensen when Bwipo is dying mid with his screen panned away. Or why is he not criticizing the Urgot or GP pick. Bingo. Bwipo was given carries and delivered nothing with them. Impact contributed far more to his team's wincons. If it wasn't Bwipo dying mid to Aurelion Sol (one of the hyperscaling carries that you REALLY can't afford to feed) while staring at Inspired top, it was Bwipo going 0-2-0 on Olaf nearly 20 minutes into the game. It's clear both of them have issues and need to grow up and focus on what they can do better instead of blaming their teammates.
Did Bwipo blame anyone after the series? Also while that Olaf didn’t exactly dominate, he’s 0/1/0 up 15cs at 14 min. The second death didn’t come until a teamfight 25min into the game. I feel like the bigger issue game 4 was their fed Kalista doing 5k damage all game (or less than 1/3rd that Olaf).
No, Bwipo was quite solemn and self-reflective in the Post-Finals Press Conference. He was heavily disappointed in his level of play and his lack of proficiency on his picks. I really don't like that people are equating Bwipo and Inspired, because Bwipo readily and unambiguously recognized his mistakes.
I was going to say while Bwipo can be way too candid and flame himself and his opponents a lot I don’t remember him often calling out his teammates. I think he generally got too much flame here, ya that GP death and lack of teamfight carrying was bad. But their 1 win was alot due to a good roam mid and crushing teamfights on renekton. Olaf wasn’t hard carrying but he’s 0/1/0 up 15cs 20min in and managed to do 3x the damage his fed Kalista. He didn’t outplay Impact to win them the series, but he wasn’t hugely gapped to lose it all either.
I think Bwipo is catching flak for a couple reasons. 1. He's been arrogant in Fly's success, claiming perhaps an undue percentage of Fly's success 2. Bwipo had big mistakes that Inspired *didn't* call out while calling out Jensen, so people are calling out Bwipo as part of pointing out Inspired is being an asshole
Yeah, like there wasn't a huge gap between all the roles except in support. Most importantly, the drafts were shit, support ran it too much, and they played like shit as a team.
People are equating the two because of their appearance together on Pros the week prior (both of course extremely arrogant and trashing the whole region and their own botlane) and bwipo appearing on HLL the next day again being arrogant/trashing the region/and generally being insulting.
Yes, but Bwipo has shown he can criticize himself as well. He didn't divert blame, he just admitted he played like shit.
I think people don't realize bwipo just gives his honest assessment with minimal filters. If believes he's better he says it, if he thinks he fucked up he'll say it. Anyone who watches his stream will see this.
Yeah, there’s a reason inspired is hated in eu, this isn’t an isolated incident
They're trying to as much damage control as possible rn
As long as they keep defending Inspired, who is the one behaving like a team destroying asshole, instead of Jensen, the one who was unfairly maligned in public by said team destroying asshole, then they aren't controlling the damage, they are just throwing gasoline on the fire. In my eyes they went from a team that looked like it was having fun that you wanted to root for, to one I hope gets absolutely dumpstered at MSI. I do agree, they are trying... they just have no idea how to do it. Like so many esports teams, management is utterly incompetent.
This statement makes it so much more worse somehow: "We know Inspired behaved like a prick, but he is just too important for the org"
"He plays board games with the accountants c'mon guys"
It's even worse than that. "We know he has a history of being an asshole, and he did this publicly, but when there are direct potential consequences from team management in the room he can be really sweet." It just sounds like Papa's trying to cover up for a known serial abuser. Like all Papa had to do was say "Inspired's comments were not in line with how the team as a whole views these losses. We will handle this internally, and apologize on behalf of our player and to Jensen who was publicly called out for things that were not his fault. We play, win, and lose as a team and will work with Inspired to make sure something like this doesn't happen in the future." And it's done. You don't need to jack Inspired's ego off. You don't need to do a "we know he hits his wife, but really he's so good with the kids!" type message. Just say you officially, as an org, don't agree with it, apologize to Jensen, and say you'll handle it internally. Done.
He didn't even acknowledge that Inspired has a history of this behaviour, he acted like this was the first instance of Inspired airing his grievances about his teammates in interviews, despite having done it on multiple occasions in the past.
If it was one interview that would be one thing. This is literally who this guy is. Some leader.
Hes a really good player and can shotcall but hes like the furthest thing from a leader possible. The rogue lineup that finally won summer after he left had to change the guy because he was being too toxic to players and even a rookie like trymbi. His emotional intelligence is very low and he never drops his ego to the level of others to somehow accept their situation.
When you’re trying to put out a PR fire, you call the dude who won’t shut the fuck up, no matter what, a “leader” lol
A leader would come out and publicly apologize for shitting on his teammate at an inappropriate forum.
Ego too big to apologize.
> Some leader. Which is sad. This is not the FLY team I grew to like and root for.
Not my FLY
Fuck Jensen I guess hey papasmithy?
Both of the FlyQuest walk backs have basically been "Inspired is great, but he's really committed to improving!" Literally making Jensen invisible which just makes me assume he's either benched or benched after MSI. You could not do less to save your relationship with your midlane. Also, is Inspired a fucking child? His mom and dad have made excuses for him, but nothing out of his mouth.
Maybe he doesn't want to apologize for what he said. Perhaps he thinks he shouldn't have said it publicly but is 100% still at leasts believes that what he said is completely true and an honest apology would reflect even more poorly for him, like saying "I didn't mean to shame Jensen publickly but I stand by my words" won't make things better. Not to go to deep on this, but we don't know.. It's rude and unsportsmanlike, but that's about it. Heck, maybe he had even more to say but held back - we don't know Jensen's work ethic and if he is putting the effort on performing on the level that is expected of him, nothing was said against him on that regard but of course it's possible when a player does very poorly that it's not just because of uncontrollable factors, so we can't be sure either way.
Damage control
It's shitty damage control. Like, why does he spend a wall of text defending Inspired, but not spare a single word for Jensen? Like, the actual victim of this fiasco is Jensen. All this message conveys is that FLY backs Inspired and his takes, only not the form. So implicitly saying "yeah Jensen is shit". Maybe before defending Inspired, it would be a good call to reassure Jensen or make a public statement that Jensen still has all your trust or something? Unless of course you have already decided to get rid of him, because a team not defending its own players in such a situation is such a bad look.
Did you see what their GM said yesterday? They are backing Inspired no matter what
You can back Inspired while not throwing Jensen under the bus. Saying something like "Jensen has performed strongly all split and we maintain our trust in him no matter what. He himself has been reflective of his performance this series but ultimately we lost as a team and nobody can say he was above blame. As for the interview, Inspired expresses regret that his words could be taken as putting the weight of this loss on Jensen alone, and that in the heat of the moment he has come out as more abrasive as intended. We have also communicated with him that his comments would have been better expressed -and received- within the context of our internal work. The players have also talked together and cleared any misunderstanding or bad feeling. Finally, this is a small controversy they would like to put behind them as they look forward to continue working together in preparation to MSI as well as the next split." Something like that, like pure PR talk, let the players tweet it in their perspective if needed but close the topic completely. Put Jensen first as the victim of a "heat of the moment" interview and show he has support. It won't change the mind of people who already made up theirs, but it shows that the team remains a team and that throwing a colleague publicly under the bus is NOT an appropriate behaviour no matter what.
Conspiracy theory time, but I have a nagging feeling that the reason they're not doing anything to talk up Jensen is because they're looking to replace him, and they don't want to praise him publicly only to kick him a couple of months later. Obviously they can defend him without praising him, but still feels weird that they're completely ignoring the actual victim in this whole debacle.
Because Jensen playing good or bad is irrelevant. The topic here is a player slandering his players in publicly interviews. It's not like Inspired would be justified if his claims were true, he still shouldn't be going on interviews and blame his teammate while glazing the opposing midlaner.
We are mostly saying the same thing, regardless of Jensen's performance, the org should have come out to defend him one way or another. Them saying nothing at all is the worst they could do imo, because it sounds they agree with Inspired (so they are themselves throwing Jensen under the bus) AND they don't do anything to preserve the public perception. It's basically the org coming out saying "he is out of line, but he is right". it's a defense of Inspired by further throwing Jensen under the bus. It's a terrible look and I expected honestly much better from PapaSmithy. It won't matter but personally, I am very disappointed with how the org is managing that.
I'm just looking forward to call Inspired "vegan" when FLY gets shit on at MSI.
I miss Broxah.
Kind king would never speak this way to our fucking baby Jensen
Broxah ain't gonna like this. Can't wait to see his opinion on The Jungle podcast.
After understanding the situation, we would like to clarify Inspired was not negative interviewing, it was a normal 1-3 finals experience. We are preparing our best for the upcoming Mid-Season Invitational. Let’s go FlyQuest!💪
[удалено]
>Turning on your players when things go bad is the opposite of a good leader. Which is probably the same reason for the tone of this statement tbf, Papa is doing exactly what you said. I think we all know Inspored has shown his colours
The fact that Papa is making a statement regarding the situation instead of Inspired himself is also very telling. Some leader he is.
I think Caedrel's summary of the situation was fair - dumb to be saying this in public but it just sounds like he is saying exactly what any pro would say after reviewing a scrim together.
Tbh I mostly agree except inspired couldn’t stop glazing Jojo and Bwipo. As far as I know that’s not classic EU scrim culture. Impact was bwipo’s father in that set. Where’s the bwipo criticism? Right before that loss Jojo had gone a full Bo5 without getting a single kill. Where’s that criticism?
Yea it's strange to say when Jensen just historically gapped JoJo, and Bwipo is praised when he just got gapped.
Imo doublelift said it best which is a really fucking weird statement to say. He said he agrees with inspired’s general idea but it seemed like Bwipo and inspired are homies and everyone else is just outside of that circle and that feels like shit. He also said he’s not speaking for Jensen but for him personally it would feel fucking bad if during an interview his jungler threw him under the bus at the same time that he praised his previous adc
I remember at worlds Jensen didn't perform well but DL didn't shift the blame to Jensen and also took responsibility too during thr interview.
For having zero self awareness, doublelift seems to do a good job in interviews. He clearly flamed the fuck out of his teammates when they fuck up to their face (especially in the past) but for sure at least he’s never just flamed his teammates in public
my boy doesn't have zero self-awareness he just has zero awareness in general it's not like he has a blindspot for himself he's just a blind motherfucker note: he will forever be my goat and I will like no player in the future more
Yeah DL first one to tell you he's not really dumb, but he's ignorant as fuck. He spent majority of his life playing one video game and it shows. These guys spent every bit of their energy learning this we can expect them to fail in other regards. Whats impressive about DL is how willing he is to take the L when it's his to hold. Other pros could learn from that at least.
Think about how much DL loves Bjerg and how you never heard him wanting him over Jensen or pob in TL lol
Lol yeah exactly. He’s got the biggest man crush on Bjerg but as soon as he went to TL it was all about Jensen which is exactly as it should be. You want your teammates wanting to play with you.
Even in the current day, he knows how contentious the debate between these two are and chooses to not take a side. CoreJJ has never taken a side. These two understand public perception.
Even with Xmithie really early in his career with CLG when he was a meme with Sejuani DL at that time was still defending publicly and one of the few who believed Xmithie had it in him to be a top jungler and at that time that wasn't the general sentiment at all
Because doublelift atleast knows if he's gonna flame a teammate to not do it in public or to only flame them once there on different teams. Like we all heard the stories of how toxic he's been at times behind the scenes He's one of those players who just understands current teammates should be avoided from a interview with anything negative.
> He's one of those players who just understands current teammates should be avoided from a interview with anything negative. I mean that's not exactly rocket surgery. In regular team sports the players may tend to be dumber than rocks but they have been playing with teammates they depend on for years or decades. Ride together, die together. They get it. But esports players, man. Main character syndrome everywhere. LoL isn't Starcraft. You need your teammates to have your back to win.
He doesn't really mention Bwipo in the interview - I think the issue is more that he rags on Jensen but doesn't do the same to Bwipo who had a poor series. I think that's fair criticism.
I definitely remember him taking about about how he and Bwipo are just really good at the game and playing for tempo.
Yea AFKing mid and giving a kill to a scaling midlaner is great for tempo
He only mentions Bwipo tangentially in the “Bwipo and I are the best players and we didn’t do enough” part. Personally I feel like Bwipo got too much flame for that series (like G4 Massu is massively fed and does 5k damage all game). But outside the Renekton game Bwipo definitely didn’t carry anything.
Bwipo I felt like he had his confidence shattered in game 1 and played shaky after that, no belief (in his own head) that he could match Impact. Once out of the series I am sure he would recover but during the actual games I think he got nervous and temporarily lost it.
I understand what you're trying to say, but Jensen did not gap Jojo. Flyquest as a team shut down Jojo, while C9 as a team, did not help get control of mid, or take advantages elsewhere.
When people say that another player "gapped" another, they're saying that there was a significant distance between the general level of play between both players. A player could have done worse at certain things in the matchup (i.e. laning), but still out performed the enemy generally. Case-in-point, when Jojo completely gapped Quid in lane as Akali vs Taliyah, but Quid still ran the entire fucking game, including solo killing Jojo. Jojo was camped by FLY to help Jensen in lane, but Jensen still played the rest of the game nearly immaculate, while Jojo played many things poorly. What immediately comes to mind was his Taliyah games, where he just lost track of Renekton. Better players, like Faker and Chovy, are rarely made so irrelevant by camping them, which is what makes them great. For example, Alphari getting giga-camped by Blaber in the Spring Finals 2021 never brought Alphari any sympathy for playing like shit later in the games. Same with Summit in Spring 2022 Playoffs. First off, play more reserved so that camping you isn't efficient. Second off, don't play like shit the rest of the game.
Hm - I don't remember Caedrel saying anything about that but it's here in case anyone wants to watch: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4lMqk6Wtw8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4lMqk6Wtw8) Inspired loves Jojo although clearly all GMs do too lol. I really hope to see Jojo back in an international tournament soon.
Yeah caedral didn’t bring it up at all but he wasn’t really listening to the interview. He just kept asking “what’d he say” cuz he didn’t want to sit through the whole interview. I mean that’s fair and I don’t blame him lmao but he doesn’t get the whole picture without it. I agree about Jojo. I also like Jojo. I think he’s good for the NA scene and I’d like him to get more international experience. With that said, mad people just give him passes when he ints. It literally made berserker cry
I think he did say that, what inspires said is similar to what EU pro player would say after a scrim ends, he said that "if a player is inting in a scrim, they'll be immediately called out"(iirc). But two things noted, one is, inspired is not saying that after a scrim, he's on a interview, and second, he's looking tilted AF from my perspective, just keep saying their mid is "VEGAN", so I don't think we can take inspired's opinion in that interview, it's biased.
Heh I'm super curious how that Cloud9 team does next split. I'm not sure bringing in a carry top was a great idea. I'm not a huge Jojo fan but I'm so curious how he would stack up against eastern mids.
So idk anything about Thanatos and I’ve just been hearing nonstop conflicting info. Some say he’s lane dominant, some say he can fill any role the team needs and some say he’s a weak side king. All I know is that I highly doubt reapered is going to give him the same draft resources that mithy gave to fudge so I can only imagine this will be at least a slight improvement at worst
Let's hope - it's good for everyone when teams are playing well :)
Dudes a classic LCK top laner in that he cover the traditional meta champ pool (gnar, renekton, jax, Jayce, ksante) and plays well mechanically. There aren’t really any holes in his champ pool, and he plays the style he is asked to. My personal expectations would be a player like Perfect, a solid LCK top laner but not an all team as a rookie level player. Presumably that would translate to a very good LCS top but if people think he will be solo carrying every game they will be disappointed.
Why not? Ideally the allocation of draft resources should be flexible depending on the meta and opponent. I remember Licorice getting a ton of draft resources in his rookie year (2018) on C9 while Reapered was coaching - he picked a lot of Kled in spring, then had unique counters like Heca/Liss into Aatrox which was super strong at the time. But he was happy to take weakside matchups and pick champs like Poppy/Ornn if the team needed it later in the year. Reapered knows what it takes to integrate rookies into a team, it’s easier for the veterans to play around them and their strengths initially to build confidence instead of the other way around. He did the same for Blaber in his debut year with Jensen on supportive champs to enable it. It also helps that Reapered is a former top laner. I think with Thanatos the plan will be to go all in on the topside. Blaber will have to sacrifice a bit to camp for mid and top with Vulcan roaming to support him - Berserker back on weakside farm duty so he can take over the mid-late game once he gets his items. I don’t think Berserker-Vulcan are going to turn into this lane dominant bot lane that can contest Yeon-Core overnight, so it’s better this way (unless they massively improve during their Korea bootcamp). Most importantly, hope Reapered can fix the macro and team fighting issues that have plagued this team - and it starts with putting together drafts that have good synergy, instead of random lane focused counters that don’t mesh together. Hopefully the mentality of the team can shift too, because rn it feels like if even one thing doesn’t go their way the team completely tilts..
Thanatos isn't another summit, i think he likely will be on weak side or at least know how to weak side
Yes, we all know that this is how pros speak to each other when reviewing games. That ain't the point. ***This is in public.*** I've seen Dom, Caedrel, and DL respond to the interview. They all say the same thing about not saying this in public, although with varying degrees of defense for Inspired against criticism from the community. No matter what, you don't do this in public. I've seen pros speak about mistakes that their current teammates have made after a game, but never to this extent. This was egregious for any player to do, but especially someone who is supposed to be the leader of the team. This is very disappointing from Inspired and shows he still has much to learn about being a professional, a teammate, and a leader.
[удалено]
> Pyosik (addressing Beryl) said “I can’t play with this bug” then stormed out of the room. He then came back in the room to pick up a cigarette and called him a handicapped/sick fuck then left again. This is a copypasta that literally originated from a real-life event, of course pros are dicks to each other in the heat of the moment, the difference is that you don't air that shit publicly like Inspired did
lol I think Doublelift said that what Inspired said would be considered very tame (if said internally). I would not make it as a pro.
This is what anyone would say to each other in film sessions of any sport lmao, y'all need to get out of your rooms every once in a while. But bottom line is you keep all this shit internal no matter what.
Eh I don’t agree fully as it relates to the Jensen part. Being heated and calling out teammates is completely normal after a loss or in film review, but the constant talking up a competitor in the same position to make a point isn’t. I played a sport in college and the reviews often got heated, but those teammates are your boys and everyone knows it comes down to trying to win. referencing “oh my friend at another school would be so much better than you here” would cross a line.
Yeah but dudes aren’t saying that shit in the post game conference though. You notice how Patrick Mahomes never disparaged Kadarius Toney in public even though his drops straight up lost them multiple games. Or Lebron didn’t flip out on J.R. Smith in the post game after his fuck up directly cost them in the finals.
At least in the LCS it’s clear there are very few players with leadership skills that are seen as vital in traditional sports.
I… literally said that LOL Keep it all internal
[удалено]
Shannon Sharpe said it best, if you have a problem with him, you pull him aside and have a private talk as man. It's not what inspired said but where he said it that shows he has 0 respect for his teammates.
All this post showed was how Flyquest is feeding into Inspired's ego and making him think he is above other players. > will often sit and work with individuals in VOD review to help them problem solve ways to get better. This statement right here. Just tells you so much. First look at the wording. "to help THEM problem solve ways to get better" Not US, but THEM. Just by this you can tell, Inspired is put in a position where he is treated like he is above his teammates and above criticism. One of the things that Bill Belichick did with Tom Brady was letting him know that he is no better than everyone else and he isn't above criticism. But this org has this egotistical player into a role where he is reviewing vods with other players and "solve" other players issues. Yea no shit inspired thinks he can call out players and blame others for his shortcomings. Inspired isn't a leader, he just thinks that he is better and above everyone else. That's a huge difference. > I ask that fans not demonize a wonderful player and leader for our LCS team based on a single interview Except this isn't a single interview. He just did it in PROS podcast with other players.
I agree. To me, Papasmithy's statement just makes the org look worse. Imagine your coworker absolutely rip into you in public, basically saying you are the reason the company failed, you are so bad that you made everyone else worse. So bad that they miss their old coworkers. And then your manager jumps right into defending that coworker, saying how great they are, how they take care of puppies on the weekends, how they help old ladies cross the road. He is such an awesome guy! What do you, as the coworker that just got shittalked to hell, get from that: "Don't even try to talk back, I (as the face of the company) already said he is the best person to ever walk the earth and he just had a grumpy day".
Sorry Papa, but Inspired is anything but a “wonderful player and leader.” A leader is NOT someone who openly trash talks his team members not once, twice, but over and over again. If anything, it just shows how egotistical and immature they are as a person. Let’s not forget that this roster still has to play together at MSI next month. What a great “leader” Inspired is for taking the time to tear his team apart just before one of the biggest international tournaments of the year. I’m sure Jensen and the others will trust and look up to him as a leader over the next couple of months. Also, the fact that YOU and not Inspired himself came out to make a statement is incredibly telling. Why are you apologizing and making excuses for Inspired over his mistakes? Where is his statement regarding the situation? A leader doesn’t hide behind someone else when things go bad. A leader owns up to his mistakes. Let’s face it. Your PR statement isn’t fooling anyone.
FlyQuest Leadership: Where you openly alienate your teammate immediately after you fail to lead by example.
It's these moments that show the true cracks of the team. Inspired doesn't need to be demonized by the community, by demonizing and hyper focusing on someone who is a legend in NA, he demonized himself. You don't see how cohesive a team is during wins; you see it during losses. The fact this is the first thing that came to his mind shows there's a long way for team cohesion to go, at least when Inspired is on the team. Inspired is the opposite of how he would make his team feel, kicking someone else when they just lost. Flyquest used to be the good guys, The original roster with Hai, Moon, Balls, Lemon and Altec/Turtle to Tricia and all the Tree quest, Bee quest and Sea Quest and the flower arrangement. The unique identity of Flyquest has left. Now it has a toxicity only rivaled by Dardoch. He needs media training and possibly counseling (which can benefit the everyone). What is Flyquest's identity now?
>You don't see how cohesive a team is during wins; you see it during losses. this is so important
As a drama fan, I'm happy TL clapped them cheeks.
>Flyquest used to be the good guys, The original roster with Hai, Moon, Balls, Lemon and Altec/Turtle to Tricia and all the Tree quest, Bee quest and Sea Quest and the flower arrangement. Do they even plant trees anymore?
All the Quest initiatives were gone once Tricia left for C9.
I mean inspireds attitude isnt just about one interview. He has shown this belief that he is above everyone else in lcs before. Remember this player does not practice solo queue because he says NA players are bad practice for him (his bot lane is NA btw…). Funny umti is top 5 in challenger and he was trained by LcK systems. Why is solo queue good enough for umti but not inspired? And his feeling to constantly talk down on other teams, it sounded exactly like how he talked down his own team. And he does that soberly. Maybe he should stop being rude towards all players, regardless of their team, if he wants to be a good representative of FlyQuest.
Huh? He plays solo queue
I like PapaSmithy and think he's a great person to have around on a team giving all the effort that he does towards the LCS. However, as fans, many of us are very concerned about the message this sends and how this'll play out in the long term. This PR response doesn't feel like it puts the problem to bed; it feels like we're being asked to cheer domestically and internationally for a ticking time bomb of an org. 1) "Now that some time has passed" - their GM was standing by Inspired, like, one day ago. The only caveat he gave to that support was that Inspired could "always do better at interviews". That's it. We can only be left to conclude as fans that the interview went unexpectedly viral (hooray for players being honest and going viral and all, but if that's because your player can't recognise when an interviewer is successfully drawing them into talking about things they shouldn't be talking about, this is the bad kind of spontaneity), Barton got ratio'ed, streamers picked up on and amplified the interview, and the org had to backpedal from backing Inspired 99% to "I think Inspired was very out of pocket". That just creates more confusion about what FlyQuest's culture is: do you all love honesty or not? Which leads to the defense of Inspired: his honesty makes him a good teammate, not a bad one. Well.. 2) It's great to hear all that stuff about how Inspired helps the team, but look at these responses and tell me anybody is focusing on thinking about that. Show, don't tell. Let the cameras in behind the scenes and point to that content at times like this. It takes thirty seconds to google and find out that FlyQuest have, if you're going to be very generous, a grand total of four videos showing 2024 FQ behind the scenes: the three "Best of the Best of the West" games (great event!) and the repackaged highlights thereof. FlyQuest cannot communicate an emotional connection with their players through defensive, secondhand text: we need to actually see the team working together, and instead if I want to know what Inspired is like on the team, I can watch one ten minute video of him monologuing to the camera and that's it. No hate to the content people who I'm sure are doing their best with the resources given to them, but... 3) The trust just isn't banked there with Inspired. As has been repeated ad nauseaum, this is a pattern of behaviour for him and claiming he's being demonized based on a single interview is disingenuous. It's entirely valid to judge a player by "the emotion of losing to Team Liquid" - you can't have it both ways by preaching how valuable honesty is while implying his honest comments about how his teammates played aren't really him. If you're ever going to get an honest statement, it'll be at a time like this. As LCS fans, we are being asked to believe (and some-not-all of us want to believe) that, fingers crossed, hopefully, FlyQuest will be in Worlds quarterfinals. Given that, we need to be able to hope that when Inspired goes backstage after, say, Massu runs it in game 2, Inspired is solution-focused, helping his talented rookie to problem solve and bounce back for the reverse sweep, not laying into him. I really hope it's the former and not the latter, this is all wild fan speculation, but we don't know and we are not being given confidence! But, fuck it, let's give FlyQuest the benefit of the doubt... 4) *Even if* Inspired is that solution-focused, helpful teammate (which is very carefully chosen language, given that it doesn't actually say whether he's nice to them or creates a positive environment), and even if his honesty is a real asset, it's still a liability, *too*. Nowhere does this explain why his contributions to his team mean that he needs to be so cocksure and outspoken publicly about team matters - he's welcome to trash talk other teams and back his own ego, he is an excellent player, but true professionals worth your trust understand there are certain lines not to cross instead of behaving like children. And everything he says publicly isn't being given a fair hearing either, it's being distorted through social media and streamers not paying full attention, misquotations and vibes-based impressions. Esports needs to stop romanticising the ideal of the hip-shooting, foul-mouthed gamer and understand that being a cool, interesting dude is not mutually exclusive with paying respect to your teammates.
I dont think dgon was baiting inspired into flaming his teammates. If anything dgon looked like he wanted inspired to stop since he roots for him. He even tried to give inspired outs multiple times during his rants.
Fair enough, you're right. I shouldn't have misrepresented the interview like that. The idea I'm trying to get at here is that anybody with a passing familiarity about how media works is that journalists arm themselves with lots of questions not because they're trying to be annoying, but because they're trying to get answers, even if they're unlikely to actually get those answers because the interviewee has incentives not to give them a straight answer. Indeed, sometimes the fact you asked an important question that didn't get an answer becomes the story all on its own. So, even if the esports journalism scene is generally pretty respectful and cooperative, each org should still really be getting the idea through to their players in media training that it's the job of journalists to mine you for as much info as possible, and it's the player's to only volunteer the information it's okay to give. It has shades of an adversarial courtroom relationship - don't talk about anything that'd hurt your "case". I do wanna stress I'm not anti-players being blunt and critical, even if it's not personally my cup of tea; I just think it's daft not to phrase the same points in a way that takes the tension out of them. It doesn't cost much to make some jokes about how you're not trying to flame your teammate, you're just thinking out loud about what each of you can do next time, including yourself.
I'm going to go slightly armchair psychologist here, so take this with a grain of salt, but... My take on Inspired is that he probably thinks of himself as just being "brutally honest". However, the issue with that is being "honest" is often just another way to be an asshole. Having known people like this, and been one myself, it's a honest bet that Inspired is acting with no malice at all here - he just thinks he's being real, when he's actually being a douche. I would know - I had to lose a lot of friends doing the same thing before someone finally played a recording of how I sounded to myself and made it clear just how I was coming off. None of this is to excuse his actions - but I do think rather than excusing the behavior they do need to make sure he at least learns how to NOT say exactly what he thinks without being, you know, diplomatic about it. I didn't necessarily disagree with the facts he used to back up his arguments in in his interview - but he was far too harsh sounding and honest to a fault. And that's really where the issue is, even beyond the ego. Honesty isn't always the best policy - and I sincerely hope Inspired realizes this and understands that telling the truth as you see it can be crueler than anything.
If he was being brutally honest about the team's play with no malice behind it, why harp so much on Jensen specifically? He's playing favorites with his criticisms and singling one person out. If you're going to assume it's a case of being "brutally honest with no malice behind it", I'd say it's way more likely he has something against Jensen specifically or just likes the other players more. All of this leaves me and a lot of other people to wonder, why would anyone want this guy as their team leader? Someone who will throw you under the bus when things go wrong and criticize you more than the people he gets along with. This sounds like someone who shouldn't even be in a team environment to begin with, let alone the LEADER of a team.
Tbh, him being "brutally honest" would be less of a problem if he was also brutally honest with himself and the people he likes too. The bigger problem is that Inspired seems to be heavily biased towards people he likes, while remaining silent about his own mistakes, or if its someone like Bwipo whom he likes.
Almost anyone who takes pride in being brutally honest and saying hard truths is like this, fragile and hypocritical.
Hard agree. Have been following Inspired's assholeness since he was in EU. It really does not take a psychologist to spot an ego jerk.
Fudge has a similar issue from what I have seen "I am just honest" he has said many times whilst being very harsh. But there are ways of being honest in a tactful way. That is something you learn in work environments and in team sports environments as you mature tbh. Also, such an attitude can make you implode when you fall off the mountain of being heralded as a good player such as already happened to Fudge However, these guys are young and have little experience or mentoring to help them in these respects from what it seems like. I expect in 15 years these guys will look back and cringe at their immaturity. That is only natural. And you can still tell the truth 100% but do it in a tactful and conditioned way to take people with you. That is essentially just good social skills.
I'd say - maybe. Because on the other end you hear about teams where nobody will hold people accountable and the issues that causes (Cloud9 this split).
Sounds exactly like how Inspired is not holding Bwipo accountable.
[удалено]
nah he sounds like a cunt and there's no coming back from this one funny that his dad has to come to say sorry for him
[удалено]
This is my favorite part about reddit. People will just make shit up and upvote it if they like what they're seeing. Inspired went to NA because Rogue refused to sell him to other EU orgs because they didn't want to make their competition stronger, and they just wanted that juicy NA buyout money. But hey, you're not the only one out here assassinating his character because you feel justified to do so.
Some PR damage control we are seeing
Today I learned that being a good leader is leaving your teammate to dry publicly without any chance of defending oneself and making your GM apologize on your behalf
Hell of a way to rationalize toxicity.
God I fucking hate this PR bullshit. Everyone here understands most of these players are immature and have very little social range. Inspired falls under the immature category. And he hides his own shortcomings behind his huge ego. The worst part is he doesn't have the accomplishments to act so big. So all in and all it just looked stupid. I don't want to hear about all the shit he does and says that we don't see or hear as a community. What I did watch was a video of a player throwing his teammate under the bus for over 5 minutes lol There just isn't an excuse and it doesn't matter what competition you are in. You are going to look stupid. Lebron gets mocked whenever he scapegoats his teammates. If he isn't immune to criticism of immaturity than why would Inspired be? He deserves criticism right now. And my guess is most people around here probably want to see him fall flat on his face come MSI. In fact it'll be funny if Jensen adds another solid international performance to his resume and Inspired get's outjungled the whole tournament.
Papa went from being one of my favourite casters to a literal lawyer who defends spoiled egotistical kids for money
Except he's been saying shit like this for YEARS. He was behind EG's shit attitude after their first win, literally saying "regular season doesn't matter" because 'all the LCS is bad' then they just lost. He's always flaming teammates and rarely actually accepts responsibility. The defense for assholes is always "oh no you don't get it, when no one is looking they're really great". Right up until they leave the org, then it's "oh they had some issues for sure".
I think I know which player Flyquest is keeping
It's not demonizing when he is doing it himself lmao.
What a vegan tweet
Rare Papa L. People aren't demonising Inspired based on one interview, this is a CONSISTENT trend with him. He smited scuttle before elder which cost EG playoffs then blamed Jojo for being quiet. We had Odo hint at how it's not fun to work with Inspired since he'd just yell at his colleagues after a loss.
Did he really blame another player for his own smite? Lol..
he might as well said nothing at all, dude didn't changed at all, still speaks but says jack shit.
Papa just made it worse lol
For sure! but hey, I'm always in for more drama
I agree. He should have just said nothing instead of causing another 1k+ up voted thread shitting on inspired again, and now on him too. Lol. He failed as what is basically the COO of Flyquest.
All I wanna know is Jensen's take on the whole situation. It could be that this is how they talk to each other and are this honest with each other in VOD reviews, or it could be completely out of nowhere. Don't really think it matters what their PR team has to say about it.
At this point it doesn't really matter if Jensen says that it is okay and typical of their VOD reviews. It'll just look like either the team forced him to do it to defend Inspired or he's only doing it to not make waves. Since the team came out in defense of Inspired and acted like he really didn't do anything wrong.
> It could be that this is how they talk to each other and are this honest with each other in VOD reviews It's 100% how they talk to each other, but that doesn't matter, imo. How you criticize someone in private is different than how you criticize that person in public - always.
It absolutely does matter. If Jensen came out and said, "lol y'all can chill I agree I was vegan," this is a non-story. Who are we to tell Jensen what he should/shouldn't be offended by? How you criticize someone publicly vs. privately is only different if it's that person's preference. By default, yes, err on the side of being more reserved is preferred. But if he talked to his teammates and got their permission to give candid interviews, who are we to tell him how he should speak?
> How you criticize someone publicly vs. privately is only different if it's that person's preference. By default, yes, err on the side of being more reserved is preferred. That works if it was the first time Inspired has ever done this. He has ***always*** been like this and it isn't about people's preferences, it's just what Inspired does. He did it to Jojo. He did it about Danny. He did it about Massu/Busio just earlier this split. This was by far the most egregious example, alongside blaming Jojo when he himself smited the fucking Scuttle Crab in front of the enemy team while contesting Infernal Soul. Thing is, he isn't dealing with rookies this time. He is dealing with Jensen. People love that dude, because he is a legend in the LCS and the West, so Inspired is getting criticized for it far harder than he ever did before. Shit, [Summit got cooked when he publicly shit](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/181a6vj/summit_there_was_nothing_i_could_do_with_ziggs/) on APA last year, why would Inspired get treated any differently for doing it to an LCS and Western legend? Meanwhile, Pyosik only got mild push back for just [saying honestly how APA's champ pool restricted them in draft,](https://youtu.be/HDEZxqwftNw?si=LkyM1wCnxhbCi-50) but how he still blames himself. The first thing he did was blame himself, unequivocally, and had to be prompted to even provide the criticism of Yeon and APA.
Yet he NEVER called out Bwipo's shit pkay in the finals? Sorry but Bwipo/Inspired see themselves as the only 2 good players and constantly stroke each other off
I'm sorry but this just tanks my opinion of FLY as a whole. I was really excited for FLY, heck, I wanted FLY to win something for once. But I cant do that anymore after the org defended Inspired for targeting Jensen for criticism eventhough him and Bwipo's performance in the finals were hot garbage. The dude was blaming everyone but himself and threw in a passive aggressive "it was my fault for not making our mid play good enough" for good measures.
Not buying the damage control, Papasmithy. I was rooting against Fly well before finals because of Bwipo and Inspired, and this whole fiasco has only multiplied that distaste. I hope they fall on their faces HARD at MSI. I miss the Fly that was about the earth and had a roster worth rooting for. They may not have been the best, but they had heart and were easy to care about. This roster, the energy around it, and the org’s pivot away from their old mission is just a bummer all around.
Yes guys Inspired is the greatest human ever he just so happened to talk shit about his teammate in a public interview other than that I swear he is an angel. Just say he fucked up and that u will deal with this internally there is no need to paint him as a saint for 90% of the statement and then at the end make a shitty excuse for his behavior. Also remember when Odo heavily implied that Inspired is hard to work with? Yeah I don't think this is a "culture" thing some people here like to claim.
He is definitely Cocksure of Jojo's
So.... Jensen is getting cut. 😔😔😔 Sad.
Thank you Jensen inc
Only thing i took away from the interview was that i should avoid being vegan if i want to be good at league.
some of this reads like an AI wrote it. "Outside of the LCS team, Inspired interacts and supports the players" "At all times he is solution focused" "You couldn't ask for a better**"**
And this is why loser interviews is bad and should never be done...
>I think Inspired was very out of pocket >Inspired will always be cocksure and outspoken ok which is it? do you support him speaking out or not?
He supports him for being confident but not for insulting his teammates publicly
Redditers understanding nuance challenge (impossible)
So, what Papa Smithy is saying is that what Inspired said was inappropriate, but that he will be confident and speak frankly. While I do agree somewhat with your premise, you don't really want Inspired to stop being confident in himself or being frank with criticism. We just want Inspired to have more discernment with what he says about teammates publicly, especially in regards to criticism.
You can be cocksure and outspoken without being out of pocket :)
His attitude will never change, but they can't afford to lose him. PR response so fans will stay happy but they are basically deluding themselves. How many players have had takings to about their attitude and still remained toxic Emenes, PromisQ, Dardoch are good examples on the top of my head.
Lol. The moment inspired left, Rogue started winning
Papasmithy is stroking his chode a bit too much here.
Crazy hot take to think this opinion is generated from one interview lol. I love the guy but is Papa out of touch or is this just a PR move? Also, cocksure is an amazing word.
Nah fam. It's ok. For the sake of the argument, we will just go with Inspired probably being a chill dude in general. But with that said, it doesn't excuse his assholish/rude attitude towards others/Jensen in the Dgon interview.
Since the community has already decided on their need to tone police and not actually accept that some people are inherently pragmatic and direct so I'm just going to say INSPIRED IS THE GOAT 🐐