The idea behind signing rookie players to a team is sound. Veteran players are known quantities and, bar a miracle, have capped out. You know what you’re getting for better and worse. By signing a rookie player you gamble on someone who’s barely at or slightly under the pro league quality, but with the understanding that they have the potential to level up beyond the average player given the right mentoring and enough time.
That last part is important, “given the right mentoring and enough time.” I’ve seen too many rookie players brought on to bottom ranked pro teams and be spit out as a ‘never-was’ within a Stage or two as if they were given all the chances in the world. I wouldn’t mind as much if those teams were, well, functional but when your once in a lifetime opportunity is for Beastcoast in Stage 3 of 2022, I feel like you aren’t getting the best environment to perform in.
The lower ranked NAL teams have historically had broken rosters with systemic issues and problematic team cultures. It’s unrealistic to expect rookies adapting to a new level of play to come in and fix those issues quickly, let alone in a single Stage. Rookies are brought in for firepower and to be molded, they are inherently incomplete players. They’re not meant to be the problem solvers of the team. It’s great if they end up doing that, but rookies shouldn’t be brought in to fix team culture problems. But that’s exactly what’s happened with many players. When they inevitably fail to work magic on a fundamentally broken team, these rookies get dropped and almost never given another chance at T1.
While it’s underestimated in Siege due to super rookies like Panbazou, Sweater, and Snake the transition from T2 to T1 play usually takes time. The tricks that once wrecked servers get easily countered by more skilled, more intelligent, and more coordinated teams and players.
This isn’t a bad thing. It’s a natural stumbling block in your average player’s career. You play to the level you’re at and playing Karn&co is nothing like playing DarkZero. Some players hit the ground running and instantly adapt, others need more time before those flashes of brilliance turn into consistent performances at the highest levels.
Sometimes players really struggle but hit peaks that you never could have expected once they get fully bedded in. Look at Grim in CompLexity’s CSGO team, his stint on Liquid was…rough but in the most recent IEM Katowice he was an unstoppable force. How peculiar that the Liquid he joined had some fundamental issues beyond his control like some of these NAL teams of the past.
When you put rookies in broken teams, they aren’t given that oh so necessary time. Bad management and irresponsible veterans expect instant results from players that are still yet to prove themselves and the results are what anyone reasonable would have expected. Look at Mirage’s graveyard and see how many players have gotten other opportunities after their time there.
But by using the current logic of teams and managers, many NAL mainstays wouldn’t be present. Gryxr’s first bout was embarrassing for a number of reasons, many of which were not in his control. However, use the logic many NAL teams use today and he’d never get given another chance because he played on such a wacky eUnited roster. Say that Gryxr isn’t Pro League quality nowadays and you’ll get mauled for the slander.
I’m not advocating for infinite time for these rookies, but I’d be remiss to say that Ferda and Xeno had a fair chance on that Beastcoast roster. I don’t know if Marmalade or Kento really had the best environment to thrive in Mirage. I’m not going to blame them for failing to problem solve team culture within a single Stage.
Many of these rookie players could have the talent to be NAL quality but never be given another chance. Top NAL teams only look at the players dropping star player numbers. When you consider how long it can take teams to create strats and build chemistry, expecting a complete rookie to drop superstar numbers in a mere 3 month window of a Stage is an unrealistic expectation. Sure, Sweater and Dream will make it out of that environment, but other players that are NAL level won’t.
The problem is made worse by the wack ass format of the NAL and lack of relegations. Without relegations players that struggled on these broken teams aren’t able to bounce back through T2 and prove that they’re better than what they initially showed. Instead these players will be treated as T2 killers, able to dunk on everyone at the amateur level but unable to hack it in Pro League. But where have been the opportunities to disprove this narrative? With no historical opportunity to cross pollinate T2 and T1, that reputation can never be dispelled.
Take some of the former Parabellum rookies: Packer’s stock is down the drain because he played weird roles on a poorly managed Parabellum and Silent was viewed as a star player with the same level of potential as Gaveni given the right situation. They’re both widely considered busts now.
All they played was SCS and SI Open Quals, they never even played a single match of NAL! The discussion up to that point was that these 2 players had the potential but would need time and experience. Is a T2 tournament and 2 open quals all the time and experience players should get to develop?
Had Packer been able to qualify to NAL through relegations with RealityTV would he still be in the discussion? Maybe. We can’t know anymore. He was punished for taking a once in a lifetime opportunity and now his career is effectively over. Pro teams have written him off because he couldn’t break the domino’s set in place by poor management. What was he supposed to say?
“No Mr. Parabellum, I don’t want a shot to play this game I love professionally even though you’re my only offer. I’ll keep playing CL on an orgless roster without pay and hope one of the better orgs picks me up. I have so many other avenues into T1 after winning everything I could in T2 after all.”
But how can these players get another shot in the league? Are there opportunities to crush that reputation? Nowadays yes, with the new Major qualifications, but for the past 3 years once you’re out of the NAL you have no avenue to prove yourself against T1 players again unless another NAL team gives you a shot. What a joke of a system and a way to showcase some incompetent management over the first years of the NAL.