If Rekkles, Jensen, Nisqy, or others end up 'teamless', what happens to them? - Tim's Takes

When players who are under contract end up "without a team," like is rumoured or possible for players like Rekkles, Jensen, or Nisqy, what happens to them? Do they still get paid? Why would or wouldn't the team sever the contract? Here's a walkthrough of the key info you need to know.

[Tamahome]

Jensen is the most internationally successful player that's domestic in NA. I have no idea how he doesn't have a team. Bjergsen seems like a side grade at best.

[thavs]

Love the thumbnail 😂 I was wondering this, thank you! I hope they get to be happy this year with whatever they end up doing uwu

[aaronlangley]

Love the video. I was curious about what happens to these players in this situation.

[mcbsted]

A new Tim video on a Sunday morning, is there a better way to start the day? Keep up the great content!

[mattpatton]

Of every NA team that has won a best of 5 against a major region team in the last 6 years, Jensen has been their mid laner. Let that sink it. All these arguments about developing NA talent to have success internationally only makes sense if you CAN'T get Jensen... not when he is readily available.

[ng]

It may not be all about money. I imagine some teams don't want to release them just to have them sign with someone else which hurts their chances of winning in season.

[darind]

Is it possible that a team could keep one of these players as a back up/position coach? I can see how their competitive natures would make it difficult, but the idea of taking Jensen away from other LCS teams, having a top tier back up, and having him available for Bjerg to practice with would be worth quite a bit. You also have an additional high-profile player for content/streaming revenue, although in Jensen's case I don't know if he's ever been much of a streamer. I haven't heard anyone talk about this possibility, so I'm assuming there are barriers to it.

[kristian.sacco.]

Enjoying the videos tim, just wanted to leave a constructive comment for future content. I find that you often belabour points, I think the videos would flow better and be easier listening/watching if you were more concise

[ryryzam]

Thanks, was always wondering this. Sucks for players though.

[euanwarkentin]

maybe some more jackeylove situations, but he was free agent

[hotmdmd]

I wonder what a player like Jensen does when he isn't on the main roster. Does he still interact with the team like practice or skrim (Most likely wouldn't play for academy) or does he just stay home and do whatever he wants? I guess my question is: If he's still collecting a salary from TL does that mean he has certain obligations he still has to do or can he just collect the money and not do anything?

[azur]

If a player is loaned out like G2 wanted to try with Rekkles, would the pay be still on G2's contract or some clause (like Academy/non-starter) or would it be a new pay directly from the team which is loaning him?

[insignificantdamage]

Rekkles probably has a very good salary despite not playing considering Carlos tried to rent him out after no team wanted to pay his buy out.

[Djfjfjrhhrjrhrhfj]

Each team should only be allowed to have 5 players with LCS contracts at any given time. Everyone else on the roster should be subject to a maximum of like 60-70k per year in salary. The current system just benefits the teams with the deeper pocketbooks. TL can afford to pay Jensen more to sit on their bench then 50% of the orgs can pay him to be their centerpiece player... that is an issue that needs to be address. What's stopping some billionaire from buying an LCS org and paying the top 50 players to all sit on his bench? If your pockets are deep enough this is theoretically possible unless there is some rule that I am not aware of that already prevents this.

Even if these top orgs cant afford to buy out all 50 players, they can definitely afford to pay 6-10 players at a time (see G2 & TL situations). This is a big issue even if it is only a handful of players being affected. Limit each team to 5 highly paid players at a given time (like I recommended from above). This forces orgs to trade away the players that they are replacing since orgs wouldn't be allowed to have more than 5 LCS contracts on their roster at any given point in time. In the case of Team Liquid, they wouldn't have been able to sign Bjerg without first trading away Jensen since with my rules you are capped to 5 LCS contracts at any given time. This helps to even out the playing field a little bit for the orgs with less financing (rich orgs would still be able to pay their 5 players more than anyone else, they just wouldn't be able to stash expensive players on their bench anymore). Also, this would open another strategy of paying other orgs to take bad contracts off your hands.

Example: Flyquest obviously isn't willing to pay Jensen a million dollars per year, but they might be willing to pay him 120k. TL could make a deal that Flyquest gets Jensen plus 880k in cash for buying out his contract and freeing up that roster spot for Bjerg. That 880k makes it so that Flyquest only has to pay Jensen 120k out of their own money, both orgs would be happy with the transaction and no star players are forced to sit out a year. TL is either stuck with the bad contract that they made and has to keep Jensen over Bjerg, or they are forced to pay another org to take the contract off of their hands. I understand the business/financial perspectives of these orgs, and sometimes it makes more financial sense to bench these players and just pay them to sit out a year. But on the flipside the LCS is a business as well, it is not good for the LCS product to have some of your best players not competing in the league. LCS business incentives should supersede those of individual orgs. Thoughts Tim?

[nubraskan]

Tim, good video. One critique. I'm a touch hard of hearing. When you speak in a low register for too long I lose track of the sentence. I wouldn't want you to speak unnaturally but occasionally shifting to a higher register helps me pick up the context of the sentence. Thanks.

[pavelr.]

Jensen has been quite terrible whole year, it shows that his attitude and work ethic is questionable, but so is actual Bjerg form, we cannot judge by soloQ games, who knows what he will look like, and if he's gonna be more supportive mid, well NA showed how playing to botlane is effective internationally. Bjergs record proves that. Wp TL, wp, like you haven't been there couple times already.

Also the fact TL chose to roleswap Bwipo back, a guy who helped to crriple his last org because of his pathetic GF drama also says a lot about a team. Wunder, the undeniable Western top-lane GOAT is teamless, while the guy who literally sh*ts himself when faces Wunder gets pretty NA payday.

And Nisqy being out of team is absolute tragedy, that guy can do preatty much everything and had a great year. And his price tag isn't something to murder budget of an average team. This off-season is a nightmare for so many great players.

At least DL tried to save it by exposing his former cancer boss and org, big balls btw, preatty admirable he did that.