6. Re-structure the organization’s management
In order to accomplish the previous five objectives, this is the one that TSM must (in my opinion) accomplish first. For far too long TSM has been an organization fraught with disorganization, power struggles, and poor communication.
The level of disorganization has been high for years, beginning with the repeated instances of former player and owner Andy “Reginald” Dinh stepping in to help, including late in this year and into playoffs. Coaching staffs have also been re-organized in the middle of the split, including this summer. While it’s totally a team’s prerogative to change coaching staffs if they feel their current one isn’t working, TSM’s decisions to not full-on fire coaches but just bring in new ones or demote old ones can create a chaotic environment where players are uncertain who to listen to and coaches have limited authority.
Beyond the coaching staff decisions, player management for TSM has been atrocious for many years. Take this year’s jungler debacle.
TSM played initially played Akaadian in the Spring Split due to a wrist injury for Grig. They then decided that both players would split time to compete for the starting spot at the beginning of the Summer Split. Akaadian eventually won the job, but was later benched due to unspecified personal issues, and eventually replaced by rookie Spica in the playoffs.
Again, there is nothing necessarily wrong with changing rosters if a player is underperforming, but TSM’s indecision and flip-flopping throughout the split deprived the team of any chance to get synergy with any of the three junglers. Then there’s the aspect of communication to the decision.
Famously, Akaadian found out about the roster swap after TSM submitted its official roster to the LCS and commentator Isaac “Azael” Cummings Bentley tweeted the news. This is not only unprofessional by TSM as an org, but it’s also not the first time this happened. Famously, Doublelift found out that he had been replaced on TSM by reading Reddit.
All of these failures in communication and player management, combined with the poor management of coaching, shows an organization that is lacking leadership. I don’t know if those decisions are ultimately up to the owner, Reginald, or general manager Parth Naidu (or neither or both) but in any case, these issues need to be fixed.
The team needs to be willing to allow its players to play, coaches the freedom to coach, its managers to manage the coaches, the owner to oversee the manager, and for the coaches and managers to collaborate over how the roster and coaching philosophy will drive the direction of the organization. If a piece isn’t working, it needs to be swapped out, the move needs to be communicated to the person in question, and then the public needs to be informed with some level of justification.
The organization, which so often seems to have multiple leaders pulling it in a direction, needs to create the sort of top-down authority that leaders like Jack Etienne and Steve Arhancet have created. It’s possible this structure already exists, but if so the team needs to strengthen it so players and coaches know where they fit within the organization.
This will be a hard summer for TSM as they struggle to understand the new normal that their organization now occupies. Decisions and change won’t be easy and scapegoating any individual player, coach, or manager ignores the larger problems plaguing this organization.