As Season 6 comes to a close, and the offseason begins for League of Legends, a fantastic talent scouting opportunity is about to transpire. The list of participants for the North American Scouting Grounds has finally been narrowed down to its final 20.
This ‘draft combine’ style event hosted by Riot Games brings together some of the best talent from the NA region to not only compete on a public state at the NA LCS Studio, but also collaborate and learn from LCS veterans, coaches and strategists alike. This move is a promising step forward in a race to maintain North America’s relevance in the international setting, where Korean teams have consistently been a step above all the others.
The players who will be attending Scouting Grounds (listed below) have been selected from an extremely filtered down list. While rating ultimately determined whether a player would make the final cut, a wide range of factors excluded many (and most top players) from attending the event. Aside from current LCS players, any player with previous professional experience at any level, and those who are under contract with a professional esports organization were removed from the applicant list.
Further, Riot performed background checks on all the remaining players. This resulted in the additional removal of some extremely talented up-and-comers, including number one ranked jungler tarzaned whose toxic behavior surpassed any reasonable threshold.
I Guess I Will Always Be The Inferior Jungler. pic.twitter.com/AoMKenhKQn
— Tarzaned (@tarzanedlol) November 4, 2016
Unfortunately, the remaining talent is fairly sparse, due to the majority of strong players having, at some point in their careers, played an LCS or NACS match.
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The full list of players invited to the NASG can be viewed here. Personally, I see godrjsdnd having a standout performance, being one of the only mechanically strong players on the entire list. The duo laners are particularly low rated, with no one occupying any of the top 40 spots on the Challenger ladder.
The event will be taking place from November 13 to November 19.
