Jatt: “Let’s just tell the cool stories that we have, and [hopefully the rest] can take care of itself.”
Q: How are we doing? Excited for LCS?
Jatt: I watched the [primer] — they do a good job. Mark does a good job keeping it succinct, but it’s just … They’re just all positive changes, which is the first time in a while, I think.
Q: Do any player or team stories jump out at you right now?
Jatt: I mean, I’ll just kind of speak generally — I think I need to do a better job in 2026 of telling the player’s stories. Because I think there’s definitely times last year where we hand waved a few things like “Inspired is [smurfing every game],” which is really good because Inspired is amazing.
But, okay, how specifically is Inspired amazing? What are the things he’s doing that elevate him above other junglers?
I want to do more “proving” of the statements that we, as a broadcast, make — which will, one, I think challenge us, but, two, make us more accurate.
I want to be held accountable to doing the correct amount of research and diving into things — and then there’s like a strong human side too.
And then in terms of the “LCS is dead” [narrative] is beating a dead horse — like I do completely agree with that. And something I want to [push] this year is really focusing on us. Let’s just tell the cool stories that we have and hope that the rest of it can take care of itself.
LYON’s going to be really interesting for me — it’s funny because so much of the LCS doomerism was around not having NA players in the league, and they’re like the least North American LCS team we’ve ever had.
It’s a LATAM organization with the Polish jungler, two Korean carries, a Canadian top laner who has visa issues permanently, and an Australian support — who was born in California, I’ll give him that. […]
[Editor’s Note: I could not confirm this?]
He played in the OPL, but he’s know, raised in Australia and stuff.
Anyway, they’re like the least North American team in LCS, but they’re just fascinating to me because Inspired got so much credit for FlyQuest last year — and flak at the end for sure — but credit for the majority of the stretch.
Q: Doesn’t LYON seem liable to suffer from the interpersonal problems we’ve seen break teams recently?
Jatt: Yeah, but not if they win. Winning cures everything.
Q: But didn’t TL and FLY, by the end of last year, prove that you can’t just keep pushing your problems down the road?
Jatt: Yeah, pretty much. I mean, FLY, to me, was never the same after MSI 2025. And TL was never the same once UmTi started having issues and left the team — even previously, there’s also teams that, if you win too much, it’s bad.
2020 C9 were just so much better than everyone else, and then they never realized that something was wrong and they choked at the last minute.
But, you know, it’s peaks and valleys: The best version of LYON are LCS champions. And then the worst version of LYON is like sixth or seventh place again.
They’re completely [unpredictable] which is why they’re super interesting.
Q: Are you also of the opinion that C9 should be heavily favored to win the first split?
Jatt: Yeah, I have them favored for Lock-In for sure.
Q: Do you think it does a disservice to them to hype them up, at this point? They’ve been favored so many times, but they’ve fallen short. Do you have to change how you talk about the team?
Jatt: I’ve done some prep on this and I’m going to probably talk about on like a podcast or something, but I can quantify why C9 is good. I think, looking back, they were much better last year than people collectively think they were.
Because the year was such a mess with the formats — Split 1 was wild, Split 2 had cross-conference, [Split 3 was Pick and Play] — we could never really compare stats.
So just said, “Okay, every game, everyone’s played against each other. Just show me the stats for that.” And then C9 was second in basically every category — there was FlyQuest and then C9.
They, aside from choking when the pressure was on the most in the final Bo5s, [were really good]. Even in Game 5 of the Split 2 finals when Blaber failed and engaged in mid lane. Otherwise, they’re freaking going to MSI, right? They were the second+best team in the whole league.
And APA is good, they looked pretty good in KeSPA Cup, and they don’t have visa issues — like a lot of other teams do, I hear.
Q: So do you — even if it’s a bit controversial — make the narrative about C9’s tendency to choke? Do you spend the season talking about key moments where Blaber (for example) overextended last year, or do you avoid the negativity?
Jatt: I think you need to reset the expectations about Cloud9 — I think they’re at a point now […] I don’t even need to make an analogy for this. C9 is the team, at this point, where it doesn’t matter what they do in the regular season if they don’t do it in the playoffs.
So the regular season wins no longer matter like they used to. […] Like the OKC Thunder before last year — they had multiple years of 50, 60 wins and they were unable to win the title.
This is going to be an old, dated reference —when Marty Schottenheimer coached the Chargers and they had Tomlinson. Like there were a bunch of years where they won like 14, 15 of the 16 games. And then they lose in like the first round of the playoffs.
They had to fire the coach because it didn’t matter that they were the best team in the NFL in the regular season if they couldn’t do anything in the playoffs.
But it’s weird for C9 because I think it just collectively takes a long time to erase memories — because they used to be the opposite of that. They actually used to be the team that was like, “Oh, maybe they’re good.” And then, “Oh, by the way, they’re actually the best team in North America in terms of Worlds results.”
It was actually expected that the team would be clutch — and then they’ve done a complete reversal where they’re the opposite of what they used to be, where they are one of the best in the regular season and they’re one of the worst in the playoffs.
I think we just need to reframe their story. I’m sorry, they’re not going to get credit if, in Spring Split after winning Lock-In, they’re 7-1 [in Bo3s].
No, you don’t get credit until you win a split again, because [C9] have just been the opposite of clutch.
Q: But since they’re so popular, there are a ton of eyes on every narrative, right?
Jatt: Okay, but what’s fair is like… I think in previous years, like it’s justified that [fans could say], “Hey, if they’re good, you need to say that they’re good” — because they hadn’t failed enough times in a row in the playoffs.
But I feel like the accumulation of the evidence now is, especially because the rosters have been so similar, that Blaber is still a very good regular season player — but there’s a very real argument that he has not been clutch.
Q: Is there a player, as a human, that you’d like to shout out? Someone whose personality you really appreciate?
Jatt: Okay, I’m going to take a second to think about this. Oh, I … I’m gonna have him on PROS later. I think Gryffinn is potentially really cool. We played with him in the show match and he was just like unbelievably competitive. It was amazing. Like, did you watch the show match? […] The stupid Christmas show match where we had like…
I was on a team with Phreak and a couple former coaches, like we had Gate and H4xDefender, who was a coach on TL as well as EG. Anyway, and then like each team had a pro player. We had Gryffinn and they had huhi and Pobelter.
It had like these stupid rules where it’s like, “Drink 10 health potions, get 30 extra points, wear a Christmas hat, do this, get up and throw a snowball.”
[Gryffinn] was all about min-maxing the points. He just really wanted to win. It’s just fun — he was so into it, rather than what I feel like could’ve happened with some other player in the past [who’d] be like “My team made me come to the showmatch.”
He flew to Los Angeles for the show match and then stayed around for a week, got to stay with FlyQuest, but the team wasn’t here; he wasn’t scrimming.
He just seemed so full of energy — [and] he’s been trying for this for a while. He posted this photo on Twitter a couple months ago where he’d gone to the LCS Championship and was like, “Oh my God — it’s the realization of a dream that I’m finally going to be playing in the LCS.”
He’s lived in Korea, he’s lived in freaking Brazil, and now he’s finally getting this chance. That level of reverence for the professional game really excites me for what he can [accomplish].
He doesn’t necessarily seem entitled or spoiled, but he does seem really talented — so I just really want to see him succeed.
Q: It’s been so nice to see the younger players be like, “I’m really excited to be in LCS. I think it’s dope.”
Jatt: Yeah, we need that. That’s the best. I think it’s really cool.
