LCS 2021: Ranking All the Starting LCS Top Laners

9. Aiden “Niles” Tidwell (Golden Guardians)

Niles is a young player with a lot of hype surrounding him as he makes his LCS debut. A top laner who comes directly from the collegiate level – he played at Maryville University for two years – many are hopeful that he could be among the first in a wave of college League of Legends players to make the jump to the LCS.

And Niles is a player with a lot of upside, especially given his limited professional and amateur experience. But the upside is theoretical compared to what he did demonstrate in his most recent performance.

On the plus side, Niles posted a 412 GPM and 183.0 MAGXD @ 15, meaning that he was doing well laning and accumulating gold in his games. Both of those stats are better than the average, but the fact that they’re not truly elite and he was playing against some of the weakest competition of all ten of the LCS top laners is less impressive.

Further, Niles posted a 1.97 aKDA, largely weighed down by a very high death per game rate (3.8) and a high number of assists per game (6.5). That adjusted KDA is slightly below the average for the starting LCS top laners.

One area where Niles does demonstrate his upside, though, is in his champion pool. With 19 unique champions played in 2020 (tied for the most of all LCS tops) and two champions (Camille and Ornn) rated as elite compared to the average, he has one of the strongest champion pools of all top laners.