League of Legends LCS preview: TSM vs. Clutch – the final gasp of TSM?
By Josh Tyler
AD Carry
Jesper “Zven” Svenningsen vs. Cody “Cody Sun” Sun
Zven has received a ton of negative attention for his play this season, particularly after his uneven play in the Spring Playoffs that handed away the series to Team Liquid. A lot of commentators have opined that this poor play has carried over into summer, but frankly, I don’t agree.
On a team with a bunch of underperformers (basically everyone on the team), Zven has actually been quite decent. In particular, he leads all ADCs in a key statistic: damage.
By contributing 576 damage per minute, accounting for 30% of all TSM’s damage this split, Zven is the most efficient damage-dealer among AD Carries, better even than Doublelift. Now, his KDA numbers are nothing to look at (2.88 aKDA but combined with a decent 109.1% aKP) and his laning could be better (he averages a 4.4 CS deficit at 10), but Zven is hardly the biggest problem for TSM this split, in my opinion.
On the other side, Cody Sun has gone under the radar as one of the better ADs in the LCS this split. His laning stats are bonkers good (144 gold lead, 262 experience lead, and 9.7 CS lead at 10 minutes), better than Doublelift’s. His adjusted KDA is also solid, buoyed mostly by the fact that he dies the least of any starting ADC (1.44 deaths per game).
The downside to this, however, is that Cody Sun’s kill participation (67.4%) and damage contributions (480.6 aDPM) are quite low for his position. His adjusted KP is only high because he gets a lot of kills and dies so little, but his damage contributions indicate that he could be playing a bit too selfishly and not taking risks to help the team.
While Zven has proven to be more of a team player, I still think the laning discrepancy could be huge. Cody Sun has proven to be far better in laning and given TSM’s early game difficulties I think that could help his team carry the day.
Advantage: Clutch