Players reflect on their series, performance and Worlds ’23 journey

We took some statements and sentiments from several players after their advancement and exit from Worlds 2023. Several players had scrums and gave short comments over the past few days, so we decided to give you an update on sentiments and statements to close off the Swiss Stage.

Kiaya gave a positive update on the team’s well-being

Kiaya gave a positive update on the team’s well-being, and all players are now healthy. Sadly though due to the health issues they couldn’t give 100%” in the series. GAM were known to have been struggling with health issues in the lead-up to their series against Dplus. Jungler Levi was thought to have had the worst of it and had been admitted to the ER the morning after their victory over Team Liquid. The rest of the team also required IV drips.

After their loss, Kiaya felt that the team’s performance was “not very good” in the loss, though he felt that he personally “did pretty well” during the tournament and that “every member tried hard and tried to win.”

Asked what lessons he learned during GAM’s run, which started back in the Play-In stage, Kiaya highlighted the need for team cohesion as a significant point of importance.

“To beat a major region we need to be united, confident and prepare our mentality well. Without that we cannot beat them.”

ShowMaker faced a tough exit at worlds

You can read the full Showmaker interview with Davide Xu after their tournament exit.

He faced a tough exit at worlds, and only wished:

“To future Showmaker, I wish you are happy.”

Contractz was elated after G2 win

LCS champions NRG provided arguably the biggest upset of Worlds 2023 so far by beating LEC winners G2 Esports. Few expected the NA side to have a chance against G2, so the eventual 2-0 stomp was something that nobody saw coming.

Contractz revealead that NRG has only managed an approximate 25% winrate in scims during their time in Korea, though he believes that “everything that we learn through preparation shows on stage.”

During the interview after their G2 win, he also reflected on his journey from playing in Worlds in 2017 with Cloud9 to now reaching the knockouts with NRG in 2023, between which he spent years going up and down from LCS to academy and back before now beginning to reach his full potential.

“Over the past six years I’ve really developed as a player and as a person, and I think all my hard work has shaped where I am today. I feel like I’m a very smart player now… I’m very proud of NA, I’m very proud to be representing North America and I want to keep making our region proud.”

The NRG win is a rare international bright spot for North American teams in recent years and the consistently poor results have also led to consistent discussions around why they do not perform better and what could be done to trigger an improvement. After those discussions unsurprisingly restarted following NRG’s victory, Esports.net asked Contractz what he feels can be done to ensure that the LCS has an NRG-type story at Worlds every year.

“I think teams and organisations need to be more mindful of actually scouting out a lot of North American players – see their strengths and their weaknesses and play according to that. I feel like there are a lot of good players in NA that just haven’t had the chance to prove themselves, nobody has taken the chance and bet on them. So I think we just have to stop being scared of failure.”

Caps and Yike both felt G2 may have underestimated their opponents

When by Esports.net whether G2 may have underestimated their opponents, Caps admitted that NRG “showed up bigger than we were expecting… They won NA and took down MAD Lions as well so we definitely knew they could be a challenge to us.”

Yike was interviewed by Davide Xu after their loss to BiliBili and exit from Worlds 2023. The hard interview touched on some interesting points about G2’s own expectations and how everything went sideways.

With their exit, the LEC is officially out of Worlds and NRG remains the last western hope in the event.

Read next: BLG Xun: Against Gen.G, we must be in our best form