League of Legends: who should be the LCS Spring Split MVP?

The LCS Spring Split ends this weekend, so it’s an appropriate time to examine who deserves the MVP award for most valuable League of Legends player in North America.

Previously, we have examined which League of Legends players across the pond in the LEC deserve the title of MVP. Now it’s time to do so for the LCS. Here are six players we think are worthy of that honor.

Kim “Ssumday” Chan-ho (100 Thieves)

The case for him: He is, in my mind, the best top laner in the LCS as far as statistics go. A lot of the reason for that is due to the fact that he has had to be the main carry for a 100 Thieves team that has imploded disastrously after having high expectations in the pre-season.

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Ssumday leads all top laners in solo kills, gold per minute, gold share, kill share, death share, vision score per minute, and gold lead at 15 minutes. His 1.81 deaths per minute are second-best only to Liquid’s Impact. Ssumday also has the bonus of having higher kill participation and kill share, indicating his lower deaths are due to more to his skill rather than Impact who doesn’t seem to have as much participation and influence in his team’s fights.

Ultimately, if we’re defining the award by which player is most “valuable” to his team, I don’t think you can make a case for anyone other than Ssumday to be the winner. His team has been atrocious both in sum and individually. Getting these monstrous stats while playing alongside a below-average jungler (AnDa), slightly above-average ADC (Bae “Bang” Jun-sik), and the worst mid (Huhi) and support (Aphromoo) in the LCS this split is just remarkable.

The case against him: Can you really be MVP of the LCS when your team is the worst in the league? That’s the big question a lot of voters will, understandably, struggle with.

Ssumday has been great, but his team has been awful. In terms of value added to a team, how much can you say for Ssumday if his team hasn’t even been competitive for the entire split?