Q: Kobe said your ego’s getting too big on The Dive, thoughts?
Spawn: Kobe keeps tipping against TL and it just makes no sense. That’s not an ego thing, that’s a rationality thing. Like when he says 100T have a chance to beat us, are we watching the same games?
When your friends are successful, you want them to be successful but not too successful. Kobe wants me to be a successful coach, but he does not want me to win again, because then he just feels like I’m going to pick on him when we’re out getting dinner or something.
Q: TL won, but it did go to 5 games today — with such a high standard for the team, how are you feeling right now?
Spawn: I’m actually pretty positive tbh, I think that FLY are a great team, they came really prepared for us. We’ve focused a lot on our game and we got pushed. And then I think that in game 5 we showed up and showed everyone a Team Liquid classic. So, under pressure the boys performed well today — I can’t ask for more, you know?
There were a couple of mistakes in draft, that’s my bad. But […] I’m super impressed.
Q: Speaking of a game 5 classic, did you hold the lane swap for silver scrapes intentionally?
Spawn: Nah, it’s like — we had a meta read, and some part of that is that standard lanes are a bit stronger now. So we were doing that, and then we wanted to play a bit of a different comp, and that comp required us to lane swap to get through the rough part of the game.
Our lane swaps are based purely on draft […] we’ll lane swap to get different advantages from the draft, but we’re not just going to do it because we feel like it.
Q: In Game 5, UmTi finally got his Lillia, a champ he’s been wanting to play for forever — how much do you think about these iconic/key champs for your players? APA Ziggs/Asol, UmTi Lillia, etc?
Spawn: Heap, tbh. I think to have the flexibility of having picks that people are known for, CoreJJ’s Rakan, Impact’s ability to play things like Renekton K’sante Ornn, Umti’s Lillia, Eain and Yeon’s Ziggs and Ezreal, […] It just gives you a lot of flexibility.
We’ve just got to pick the right moments to make sure it’s strong in the draft. What we did [today] is grinded this series down and made it a tank vs tank matchup, and then sneaky Lillia pick, maybe they don’t have the 5 minutes off stage to prepare the draft that you normally have, and then they get caught in a tank vs Lillia matchup.
Q: Was part of that idea to bait Bwipo into a carry pick (banning Renekton, Morde and blinding K’sante)so you could lane swap on it?
Spawn: There was a little bit of that, don’t really want to talk too much about the game 5 draft apart from the jungle matchup. I’ll say what we looked at how the series was trending, and we felt like we were getting some advantages somewhere, but the Renekton was a problem to those advantages and we wanted to play a Kai’sa comp, and Renekton’s pretty good into the chamion. So [we banned it].
Q: You’re expected to be NA’s saviors at Worlds — what does TL have to work on, in your opinion?
Spawn: We’re just trying to drop ego and have better practice. Our practice at the moment has been pretty low quality. C9 and FLY are probably feeling more confident than ever playing against us because we have kind of slipped in that regard.
I always say to my team, the way to stay number one is to train like you’re number two, but right now we’re training like we’re number seven. We’re just terrible in practice. So I think that, you know, we got to stay a little bit more humble, focus up a little bit, grind out solid queue, grind out the night blocks and just get the practice environment back to where it was when we were really thriving as a team.
And part of that’s on me, you know? As a coach, I’m not perfect, and this isn’t me throwing the players under the bus. I came in a bit lackadaisical for a couple of weeks, maybe my prep wasn’t as good as it could’ve been. Maybe being on top for a little bit too long means that I’m just content with our meta read as opposed to forcing us to keep up with the global meta.
Me and Reignover need to do better — Mash came out this week to help us, he’s actually a big driving force working with the bottom lane, that really helped us.
Q: Any fun stories with the team?
Spawn: I’m actually not a fun guy, I’m not gonna lie. I’m like the most boring wet blanket.
Q: But you observe the fun!
Soawn: I do observe the fun, like the fun I see is when I get in in the morning and my players are there already, putting in the work, playing solo queue before the day, and when I watch them play until 1 AM. That’s the fun I see.
And, at the moment, we’re all on the gym grind as well because we’re trying to look after our mental and physical health at the same time.
Q: That’s been a massive trend lately, I’m sure you’ve seen that change across the league.
Spawn: I think it’s awesome, I love that change. I encourage all my players to stay active, we stretch every morning, we make sure we’re out in the sun. We make sure that we’re drinking enough water, Heidi our chef makes sure that we’re eating good food, and I think exercise is part of that. We’re stationary for […] at least 12 hours of the day, we’re in our gaming chairs.
Q: Last question: Who’s the most flexible?
Spawn: Actually, our academy mid laner, Roamer, is still in LA. When we do stretches he’s definitely the most flexible.
I think me, UmTi, and Core have bad backs, so we’re the old men rolling around on the ground, struggling.