After an incredibly disappointing year, 100 Thieves has decided to move on from its League of Legends head coach, Neil “pr0lly” Hammad. The 29-year old coach spent two years with the organization after getting picked up from the LEC.
Pr0lly was signed as 100 Thieves’ coach in 2018 when the team joined the LCS ahead of that year’s Spring Split. Their roster was led by All-Star top laner Kim “Ssumday” Chan-ho and they were strong enough to place first in their debut split in the league—but they lost to Team Liquid in the playoff finals.
From that point on, the team started to slump. The following split, 100 Thieves finished in third place in the regular season standings but lost to Liquid and TSM in the playoffs. They also failed to accomplish much at Worlds that year, bouncing out of the tournament in the group stage with a 2-4 record.
And 2019 was a mess for 100 Thieves. Several roster swaps didn’t pan out the way they wanted and the team clearly had synergy and communication issues throughout both splits. They finished in the bottom three of the LCS in both the spring and summer, with multiple question marks looming over the roster and the coaching staff.
Pr0lly might not even be the last move 100 Thieves makes since there are plenty of issues that need to be addressed by this team. The players didn’t fit together, which would make any coach’s job a lot harder to deal with.
100 Thieves hired former LCK caster Chris “PapaSmithy” Smith to be the organization’s League of Legends general manager in September. He’ll be in charge of finding a replacement for pr0lly and any other roster changes for 100 Thieves heading into the 2020 LCS Spring Split.
