Barley Found Out Apdo a.k.a Dopa Is The Original King of League

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While I do agree that "some" of it isn't like the renegades/TDK thing, a disturbing amount of it is which combined should violate rito's rules. From what I can understand, one of the reasons both teams were punished so harshly had a lot to do with the skill of the players to potentially avoid one team being relegated (as at the time, ninja/seraph were massively outperforming the combination of Ich/"sh't-tier" toplaners). Look at the TL/TSM thing, and it's much the same as TL is literally going from a mid-turned-adc into what is statistically one of the top-3 ADC's in NA of all time. Your idea of one owner only doing it out of a "friendly relationship" is also a bit off, as TSM actually benefits quite massively from keeping TL in the LCS** (mainly due to the fact that the less "sports-sponsored" teams there are, the less the other teams have to worry about overpaying for their players).** If rito wants to keep their league balanced, they really should be applying the "TDK-rule" to this, as otherwise teams like TL/TSM/C9 could just hoard/lend talent to eachother at whim to prevent each of them from being relegated, much like what is happening now.

TL actually has received a strong flux of money from external investors and is reported to have the player with the highest salary in LCS, namely ReignOver, and Piglet is another player that has a star level salary, way above league average So keep TL in the game doesn't really help lowering salary players for TSM, and well, TSM has not real problem in paying salaries, especially because they can offer lower base salaries than what they should given the strength of their brand that increase player earnings on streams). The advantage TSM get is more on politics side, as TL is one of the team that is closer in their campaigning for LCS franchising and way higher split of the revenue

This friendly relationship that lead Double to TL, which is also a personal friendly relationship of Double with Liquid owner (thing which should not be forgotten, probably Double would have not accepted many other teams), can be deemed as unsportsmanlike towards the other teams, but is not against any rules... I mean, TSM isn't even using Double and wasn't planning to use him in Spring, technically what can stop them from allowing one of their inactive players to go to another team? What can stop Liquid to asking to another team a player they don't use? It is not like REN/TDK where there were strong chances that the teams were going to face each other. And I doubt that those moves were planned ahead either, TL even tried to go first with a guy that they had yet in the roster in the past, and only after they got desperate they asked for help

The community should give them flak for these kinds of moves unfair to their competitors and overall league growth and health, but if you swap the team and player name with random X,Y and Z and look at rules no one could say this situation is any different from, let's say, a team asking Cris to Dignitas

And tbh, I doubt TL would have been relegated even without this move, they would have been better than second place challenger teams and at least one of NV/DIG in double elimination tournament, it is just that now it is assured that they won't get relgated