TL Spawn: “We crack the whip pretty hard at Team Liquid.”

Q: Were you also surprised that Game 1 was closer, considering how comfortable the draft looked?

Spawn: I can see that for sure. I think, just the nature of the game one draft always means it’s gonna be a slower game. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that excuses the mistakes we made in the game, but I think that it’s very hard to run away with a game against the comp that they had in Game 1.

Whereas I think Game 2, the comps are very similar — normally, when similar comps play each other, if one gets a significant lead in the early game (which obviously we did off the top lane gank, bottom lane gank into the dragon fight), those games just explode really easily.

I think that we’ve been on the flip side of that, you know? Games like Game 1, where even though you feel like you’re battling and battling and battling, you never really have a foothold, versus games like Game 2 where maybe if they’d turned one of the fights, it would have been different. But when they don’t, then it’s just a absolute shellacking.

Q: When UmTi had to pause for the medical emergency, what was your reaction? You’re in Australia and can’t step in. Did you know about it before?

Spawn: I actually didn’t know about it before, which I gotta check-in with him about and kind of, like, get his vibes. I do a morning check-in on game day with every single player. We go through like just a couple of questions: How did they sleep? What are their energy levels today? When are they planning on taking their caffeine? When are they planning on eating?

Basic stuff that, when I’m there in person, I’m really on top of as Head Coach. We did the check-in, like I said, but I was a bit surprised when he said he’d hurt his wrist [on-stage]. But, in saying that, sometimes things just slip players’ minds on the day. They’re not really thinking about it.

And we’ve had [quite a] bit going on in the team. So, you know, the first thing I think of is like, “Holy shit, is my player okay? How much pain is he in? Is he actually going to be able to play the game? Potentially, does he have a wrist fracture that he’s like sleeping on that he doesn’t really know about?”

My first concern is for UmTi, obviously. Then my second concern is like, “Okay, if you can’t play, what does that look like for the team?” You kinda go into problem solving mode. I’m really lucky. I’ve got Swiffer, Reignover, Dodo there. I’ve got Tanner, on our performance team. I have a lot of people I can delegate stuff to. Tanner takes a lead on stuff like this.

He was out there ASAP, got UmTi some painkillers, got him an ice pack, made sure that he’s okay. And then UmTi was fine. I think he had a sensational game. We talk about this a lot on the team actually — sometimes you play your best when you’re a little bit uncomfortable. You know, maybe you’re a little bit sick, or a little bit rundown, or you haven’t slept 10 out of 10. […]

Sometimes they’re the days that you show up and you feel like “Oh, maybe I don’t have it today,” and something clicks because you’re focusing extra hard on it, and you do have it on the day. Obviously, UmTi had a great game despite what he was feeling.

Q: What made you want to pick up Yuuji? What makes him a good fit?

Spawn: Yeah. I mean, I think I’ve talked about it. UmTi is like a really creative player. You saw that in Game 2 with the ganks he was going for. But sometimes what the game dictates is a lot of stability, and for people like Impact or Core to bring the creativity. [In scrims], with certain drafts, the stability that Yuuji brought to the team was better than UmTi adding levels of dynamic or creative play.

I think I spoke about this a lot on The Crack Down, one of the main reasons I wanted to scrim with other people was to see how good our lineup was and what issues existed outside of our core. We did that for a while. What we identified is that Yuuji’s communication style and gameplay style actually solved some of the issues. That made it worthwhile to continue scrimming with him.

And then as you continue to scrim with him, you see more and more. I think he’s a really mature guy. I think that he’s very aligned with the team as well, on his beliefs and his goals. It was just a really great opportunity, to be honest, to pick up a great player. The other thing is, we know that UmTi’s not gonna play the game forever. I don’t know when he’s gonna call it quits, but he’s been in America for a couple of years, but he is South Korean, and he probably wants to go home eventually.

And, you know, Koreans always have things like military service and things like that […] to attend. So this is a little bit of future-proofing as well. We think that he’s gonna be an A-tier prospect next year. To be able to get ahead of it by a split makes a lot of sense to me. I’ve always kinda had that belief.

I used to do it through my tier two ecosystem. But now I don’t have that ecosystem anymore. You know, we’ve got a great partnership with Blue Otter, but not necessarily the same in-house relationship. To be able to secure a player for the future is very important. I was talking to him earlier, and he’s already in the facility enjoying himself.

Q: He doesn’t like the ping, though.

Spawn: None of them do. Everyone that comes from MU really doesn’t like the ping. APA never liked it. Yuuji doesn’t like it. That’s alright. We get good ping in scrims here, and we get better scrim quality practice. And we’re a triple block team anyway most of the time, so he’s not gonna be playing that much solo queue.

Q: Does the Maryville system prepare players to make LTA debuts? Does it make them more attractive prospects?

Spawn: Not really any, to be honest. I mean, it’s nice for people to compliment the MU system, and I do think that they have a great system. We’ve taken a couple of players from there now, but I do think that whilst it is LTA lite, it is *very* lite.

The demands, probably, even been between DSG vs being on TL, are quite significant, is what I would probably think. I mean, you can ask Eain about it, but yeah, I’m sure he was cruising at MU and he definitely was not cruising for the first 3 months on TL. He was being pushed pretty hard. If you talk to Yuuji again in two months, my gut feeling is he will say the same thing.

We crack the whip pretty hard at Team Liquid.

Q: Tell me about your books — I see Way of Kings back there, which is one of my favorite books

Spawn: So I’m a little bit strange. I keep a couple of books in rotation at the same time. From the cosmere, I’m reading Mistborn series two, the more modernized version […] which I think is great. I’m up to the last book, probably about 150 pages left.

And then I have the last book of [The Stormlight Archive] to read. I’ll get to that eventually.

Then I’m also reading Malazan Book of the Fallen. I’m up to the final book in the Malazan series. […] It’s another universe-big book, a big series that I’ve been reading. It’s a complicated read. If you read Malazan, make sure you bring a pen and paper […] for the first two hundred pages because you probably need to take a couple of notes to just make sure that you’re situating yourself well in the world.

It is a very much like a show, not tell book. Sometimes, when you get introduced to characters in other books, it’s like “He was seven-foot-five and his armor was gold and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Whereas Melazan is much more of the, “I had to crane my neck talking to him, the rest of his armor appeared to glow, blah, blah, blah, blah.”

I would say the writing in Malazan is probably the best writing I have read lately, even if the story isn’t the best story that I’ve read. I really enjoy it. And then, I’m just reading a couple of other little novella books on the side as well. I wanna get back into reading some history. […] I actually I’ve had Marcus Aurelius’ book on my list to read for a long time.

Q: Military theory to keep TL locked in?

Spawn: Yeah. Correct. Actually, I was reading a little bit of chess theory and need to get back to reading some history and I always loved Julius Caesar’s campaigns. He actually used to keep diaries of his campaigns that he was on, and there’s a lot of good translations out there of those.

And so I go a little bit further and maybe read some Marcus Aurelius or something like that. That’s kind of what I’m occupying myself with at the moment. But in saying that, every day I’m on about 4 hours of sleep. So as you can probably tell, my eyes are falling out of my head at the moment.

Q: There’s no schedule where you can get more than 4 hours of sleep?

Spawn: Honestly, on a personal note, I wish there was at the moment. My staff meeting starts at about 02:30AM Australian time, and then my son is just struggling a little bit at the moment. I’m just trying to balance being the best dad I can possibly be with being a coach.

So that’s eating into some sleep time, some me time — which is okay, you know? But I gotta take a little bit better care of myself. I’m being a little bit of a hypocrite at the moment, because if one of my players was doing this, I’d be like, “You gotta get your priorities right.” But [it’s] just been about a week of burning the candle at both ends. So we’ll see.

Q: Yuuji mentioned that he thought you were very scary before meeting you. It’s kind of your reputation in the scene, right?

Spawn: It’s probably with good reason. Not scary, but [maybe] intimidating is the correct word, because of my intensity within the team. But I think what everyone sees as soon as they join the team is — not to be too corny — my big heart and my ability to love.

Straight away, Yuuji and I are connecting over workout routines, getting to the gym together, and eating well together. Because I know that gym and healthy eating and, sleep schedules is something that he’s really passionate about. And also, as I said, he seems like a great, mature guy.

So just trying to connect to him on that personal level. And I think that’s what kind of separates me as a coach, from a couple of other coaches to be completely frank. My ability to form meaningful relationships with my players allows me to push them to what they think their limit is — and maybe a little bit beyond to get them to improve.

I think if you don’t care about your players and you push them, you’re an asshole. If you do care about your players and you push them, you can be a great coach. I look up to people like Eric Spoelstra, Gregg Popovich, who’s just had to retire due to a stroke, and kind of their relationship [with their players].

They’ve been able to [succeed] throughout their careers in traditional sports by caring about their players. And, that’s something that I always wanna be remembered by by the people that I coach. Because, you know, I don’t mind if people say, “Wow, he’s one of the hardest coaches I’ve ever worked for. Wow, he like yelled at us occasionally. Wow, he made us work through a lot of the issues that we had.”

But I hope they always add the caveat at the end that, “Yeah, I knew at the end of the day, he always cared about me and had my best interests at heart.” So hopefully that’s what Yuuji’s seeing at the moment.

You can’t show that side of you to everyone. Otherwise you get run over in real life, but, hopefully, now that he’s on the inside, that’s what he sees. I think to be fair, Impact is a lot like that as well. Impact can be the harshest person in the room, but he also can be one of the most supportive and best teammates that we have on the team. It’s nice to work with people like that.