League of Legends: who should be the LCS Spring Split MVP?
By Josh Tyler
Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng (Liquid)
The case for him: Speaking of Mr. Peng, why not the best ADC in the LCS for an MVP choice? Liquid was a monster of a team last year, even before the addition of Jensen and CoreJJ, so we know that Doublelift is the real-deal talent. After being kicked from two teams, Doublelift has set out to prove all the doubters that he is, in fact, the best western ADC and so far he has done exactly that.
He leads all NA ADCs in gold difference at 15, deaths per game, kills per game, gold per minute, and damage per minute, putting him at #1 in our metrics for his position. Given his and CoreJJ’s dominance over all other bot lanes this split, Doublelift seems like the obvious choice here.
The case against him: We touched on it earlier, CoreJJ is so good relative to his position it’s possible Doublelift is getting that artificial boost to his numbers by playing with the best support in the league.
Jake “Xmithie” Puchero (Liquid)
The case for him: Xmithie is the best jungler in the LCS and by our metrics the best player in the LCS behind only his teammate, CoreJJ. Xmithie doesn’t lead junglers in many statistical categories but, like Bjergsen, he’s firmly at the top of just about all of them. There’s nothing this guy doesn’t do well in the jungle, and as a result, he’s elevated himself and his team’s performance.
As dominant as CoreJJ has been among supports, Xmithie has been nearly that dominant among junglers. The gap between him and Nam “Lira” Tae-yoo (our second-ranked jungler) is almost as big as the gap CoreJJ has over Hakuho.
The case against him: Notice how I keep saying “nearly” and “almost” when comparing Xmithie to CoreJJ? Can you really justify him being MVP when his teammate has outperformed him and been more dominant relative to his position?