The talk of the town this week in the wonderful world of the NA LCS is the relatively unexpected trade of 100 Thieves’ William “Meteos” Hartman for Academy jungler Andy “AnDa” Hoang on FlyQuest. With that trade, there are no longer any original Cloud9 roster members starting in the LCS.
There are many very strange facets to the Meteos-AnDa deal. First, we assumed 100 Thieves might be trying to maneuver some roster ninjutsu to get their own Academy jungler, Đỗ “Levi” Duy Khánh, on the starting roster. As it turns out, AnDa is going to be starting for them, which seems like a pretty significant downgrade from both Meteos and Levi.
The second strange part of this trade deal is the fact that FlyQuest isn’t going to be starting Meteos, who has been one of the league’s best junglers for the better part of the last five years. Instead, FlyQuest will allow him to compete to earn a spot on the starting roster, according to 100 Thieves’ announcement today.
If you’re a Meteos fan, that really, really sucks to hear, especially because it makes no sense. Sure, if he really was having communication and relationship issues with the 100 Thieves staff or other players, it makes sense that he’d find a new home. What doesn’t make sense is that his new home would settle him on the bench.
The real tragedy, some would argue, is that this means there are no more players from the original Cloud9 roster left standing. Hai Lam, An “BalIs” Van Le, Daerek “LemonNation” Hart, Zachary “Sneaky” Scuderi, and now Meteos—they’re all either out of a team or benched in the Academy league.
Hai and LemonNation were both on teams last split, but were ultimately replaced and let go before the start of the Summer Split. Balls hasn’t had a team since his days on FlyQuest in 2017, and Sneaky is currently rocking the Cloud9 bench in the Academy league, where two other Cloud9 starters took up residence until recently.
One could argue that technically Jason “WildTurtle” Tran is OG Cloud9, and not Sneaky, for his five weeks on Cloud9 at the start of the NA LCS’ first official split in 2013. But then you’d just be arguing semantics.
It’s the end of an era, and although Meteos will probably find a home on a starting squad by the end of the split, we can still be dramatic about it in the meantime. We should probably hold some sort of memorial service, right?
Published: Jul 2, 2018 12:29 pm