LYON Isles: “Today’s games reflected, I guess, the poor personality traits of our team in some ways.”
Q: I feel like this loss probably isn’t too tilting, all things considered. Is it tilting?
Isles: I think like losing this series doesn’t matter, but I was really mad after first game, I will say. I think, I mean, the individual level was not great. I played, personally, pretty bad in Game 3 like … I had my camera in a bad spot, so when I thought that my mouse was over Caitlyn, it just hit K’Sante — [or] that one fight where Ryze ported us around to the left, that could’ve been game changing in a different way.
But stuff like this is not like …. it’s kind of just stage incidents, I suppose. Like if you ever watch F1, they have what they call “driving incidents” that aren’t someone’s fault — they’re just things that happen. Sometimes you make mistakes on stage, mechanically. That stuff can happen.
But the way we played in Game 1 is just … It’s a bit unforgivable in some ways. I mean, obviously again, I don’t really care that much if Armao makes a mistake. At the end of the day, he’s doing us more than a favor — it’s been a big blessing to have him around and to do this well with him.
I’m really proud of him. I’m really proud of the boys in that sense. Of course it’s easy to say, like, everything will get better when Kacper gets back, but I think for the four of us, it’s not a series to look back on.
Q: When Armao came in, it felt like the four of you still had structure around him. At this point, though, your game feels a lot more like solo queue.
Isles: Yeah, I mean, I think just with everyone taking a bit more responsibility, there’s just… People want to be heard in game. I think in Game 1, that was the biggest issue: Trying to fight on mid when Soul is free and using — again, I don’t want to blame Armao for mistakes — but using J4 ult on a guy that has flash up anyway …
Like, Syndra is just screaming in comms to, like, try and make a fight happen, and MF is just saying “Just play slow” — and no one even calls for Shen ult, I wasn’t even looking when J4 died.
I just think, I mean, Game 1 was just a bit too for fun. I think we’ve had this in our games before, even the game that we played against Shopify — if you remember the second game when we played Olaf and we were really ahead, and Dhokla randomly dies top to people roaming. This happened in this game too.
It might not have been the catalyst to why we lost necessarily, but I think our team has for sure gotten a bit too lax in practice and when we’re in winning positions.
I don’t think we’ve lost a game from ahead like this … maybe ever, on-stage. Literally ever. I don’t remember us having a significant lead and ever throwing — even internationally. I don’t think this has ever happened. So honestly, even just saying this out loud, it’s like a bit … unbelievable.
I know, like, if we had Kacper here … When you have someone who’s the voice of reason, who’ll shut down all the nonsense at some point, the game may have looked completely different. It’s so easy to say that — but it’s our responsibilities, as individuals, to make sure stuff like this doesn’t happen. And we fell very far short.
Q: My concern, though, is that even when Inspired comes back you may not have enough time to fix stuff. I’ve heard that scrims have been really tough for a while. Does that actually concern you?
Isles: I mean, obviously it’s a funny situation, but I’m not really concerned about that, to be honest. I’m just more mad at myself, and mad at some of my teammates, that we let this happen. I care more about the performance than our …
I mean, trajectory is part of it, I suppose, but I don’t think our team will look like we did today in two weeks — I’m sure of that. But [we do have] an over-reliance on one player, in some ways. I think at least the first three weeks we did a pretty good job with the meme of saying that, like, Inspired was not the one who carried, but obviously he did carry a lot of weight still, regardless.
I mean that’s just what’s most frustrating to me, I think that … I mean, like you say, scrims haven’t been going well for a lot of different reasons — and some of today’s results were just the build up of that laziness, or frustration, or whatever it might be.
[The blame] could be directed at anyone. You can point fingers at whoever you want, but at the end of the day, we show up at the very least as four, and Armao did a great job subbing in for us. I wouldn’t even say that it’s necessarily anyone’s fault.
Q: Have you guys talked about it? Is it even worth, like, addressing what Inspired’s return might just fix?
Isles: I mean literally like 10 minutes ago, our coaches had a two-part conversation. One, [it was] thanks so much to Armao for subbing in for us, because it really was mega for us. But secondly, they sat us down to talk about this — to talk about this mindset that you mentioned, that maybe we’re being a bit too lazy, maybe we’re just saying “It doesn’t really matter;” like, you’re going through the game with a mindset that sometimes your jungler might just grief — respectfully of course. Maybe he’ll just grief.
I think in Game 2, draft was really hard, but in some instances, pathing-wise and decisionmaking-wise, maybe Trundle was just completely griefed. The game was really hard in Game 2. Just I guess, [to] shine a bit of light on it, based on what we heard from jungle, we thought Kha’Zix was pathing up. So when we died bot to this gank, where Kha’Zix was, we were trying the whole time to crash the wave thinking Kha’Zix was at Krugs 30-40 seconds earlier, and we were trying to play on the edge of that.
If Kha’Zix came, we were just gonna flash and hope for the best. But, by the time he actually appeared bot, we didn’t have any semblance of an idea that he would be there. We thought he was on the opposite side, just based on what jungle said — based on when Trundle saw him at top crab — and the game exploded from that. But stuff like this is easy to blame on having a sub jungle.
But, yeah, our coaches sat us down to say, like “The stuff in between isn’t good enough. Game 1 isn’t good enough, Game 3 wasn’t good enough.” I think Armao, again, did a good job.
There are a lot of things to work on, and I’m sure Kacper will fix some of them. Maybe a lot of them — he’ll fix the team’s attitude in some ways. But today’s games reflected, I guess, the poor personality traits of our team in some ways.
Q: Have you guys worked with Inspired or done any review or prep together as a team, to set up for his return? You don’t need to say when that’ll be, but …
Isles: Soon, hopefully. I don’t want to reveal details — like, I don’t think it’s my place to do so. But speaking just, I guess, from my personal experience with Kacper, I spoke to him a few times — particularly when we began scrimming — but since he’s off doing his own thing, [not much else].
I mean, I’m sure he’s had communication with my other teammates, but it’s more of a direct channel; it’s not like he’s been watching our scrims and giving us feedback as a five-man unit. Generally speaking, unless the game goes in a kind of a unique [direction], our team doesn’t really structure reviews in same way that other teams do, where we all sit down on a couch and start talking about the game as soon as ends.
A lot of our players are just knowledgeable enough to talk about points directly to the individuals that matter. When we scrim, sometimes we review for three minutes as individuals — sometimes even two minutes. Sometimes maybe even not at all, if the game just happened in a way that we understand what went wrong.
And I think, again, for me, when I had questions to Kacper, I learned some things [from discussing with him], even while he’s obviously abroad. But it’s kind of going to him directly rather than some sort of team structure.
Q: How are you feeling about facing TL and C9 in Mexico?
Isles: TL obviously looks good, but I think the success is overrated. I casted their game vs FLY last week, I believe. I’m not sure if I did a good job at pointing out some of the mistakes, but I thought that the way that TL made mistakes in that game was a bit low, to be honest.
They might have a great scoreline, but the way Core was dying on Karma, trying to like run at people — he died twice like that. That’s the same kind of vibe that we had today, where we die on side randomly, [or] calling people on swaps — that happened against SR, that happened today.
I think teams just aren’t clean enough. It’s not the same gameplay, I think, that we experienced at MSI. I don’t think TL is unbelievably good. I think they’re for sure a solid team, but the mistakes they’re making are not ones that go unnoticed to me. I’m sure people who are a bit more honed-in might see them too. But I think they’re so far from unbeatable, and the way that they’re beating teams right now is not that impressive to me.
Header Image Credit: Riot Games
