LS joins Cloud9 as LCS head coach

Streamer, content creator, and commentator Nick "LS" De Cesare has officially joined Cloud9 as their LCS head coach for 2022.

LS joining Cloud9 has been rumoured for some time. But it seems even more obvious when looking at Cloud9's roster construction this offseason. Rather than bringing in a player like Yasin "Nisqy" Dinçer, C9 opted to roleswap top laner Ibrahim "Fudge" Allami to mid lane. It was also confirmed on Reddit that they offered Tim "Nemesis" Lipovšek this LCS mid lane spot. Both players are well known as friends of LS.

Furthermore, Cloud9 imported three Korean players this offseason. Park "Summit" Woo-tae, Kim "Berserker" Min-cheol, and Kim "Winsome" Dong-keon all joined the team. Having lived in Korea for many years, LS is much more familiar with the scene there than many western figures. The signing of Winsome especially hints towards this - he was playing in the amateur scene in Korea before Cloud9 picked him up.

"A lot of people over the last couple of weeks have speculated that a lot of the Korean players that are coming to Cloud9, or a lot of the decisions that have been made, lead to me in some way," LS said in the official announcement video. He continued to say that, while he couldn't confirm or deny any of his full involvement, he had agreed to help Cloud9 regardless of whether or not he became their head coach, and he did like the moves they made this offseason.

LS is well known as one of the most controversial figures in League of Legends. He heavily promotes concepts such as freezing lanes, prioritizing tower plating over rift herald, and a completely different approach to drafting. These ideas have seen him gain a large following and a large group of doubters. He's also butted heads with many western LoL figures on some of his viewpoints.

We'll now see what a team with LS and his thoughts at the helm looks like. LS hasn't coached professionally in a number of years, and was largely unsuccessful. Previous coaching stints included Gravity and Tempo Storm in North America, and bbq Olivers in Korea (where he became the first foreigner to join a Korean team in an official capacity). Now though, he has the resources of a top-tier North American organization behind him.

In the announcement video, LS has already shown he's putting his ideas to the test. He has long held that good coaches should be able to go toe-to-toe with their players in lane. To that end, Cloud9 will be bringing over several Korean Challenger players to help with coaching and scrims for the team.

LS stated that his goals for Cloud9 this year are to win the LCS, and to challenge Korean and Chinese teams at Worlds.

"I thought, watching Worlds this past year, that LCK and LPL teams actually regressed in terms of gameplay, and I thought that it actually looked possible for western teams to legitimately take games off or even actually upset, or beat them outright," LS said in the announcement.

There are many strong competitors even in the LCS this year, though, and going that far will be a challenge. However it turns out, though, it's sure to be entertaining.

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