With their focus on steady improvement, is it time to believe in CLG again?

Before Counter Logic Gaming completed their first playoff series victory over an opponent since 2019 in a clinic over Golden Guardians last week, there was a chant in the crowd:

“I believe in CLG.”

It wasn’t an established motto or a repeatable phrase brimming with a “bring it on” attitude, but it was a fitting rally cry for a team that kept surprising analysts, casters and opposing teams alike throughout the League Championship Series summer split.

The team that ended the regular season leaderboard in fourth place looked every bit the contender in its first lower bracket series. Behind the chemistry and brain trust of Thomas “Thinkcard” Slotkin and Chris “Croissant” Sun, there could be more tricks up CLG’s sleeves before everything is settled. At the end of playoffs, there may be no choice but to believe in CLG.

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Fourth place might not look like a huge accomplishment, but for a team that ended the spring in eighth place with many in the media ranking them similarly in the summer, it’s growth. The growth has not gone unnoticed. Thinkcard and the rest of the coaching staff -- Croissant, Apollo “Apollo” Price, Brandon “Brandini” Chen and Tanner “Damonte” Damonte -- were recognized and awarded as the best coaching staff of the summer split. They were ahead of the patch curve and the meta picks and carefully curated a style of play that benefited the aggressive roster and allowed the players to make mistakes and evolve from them.

“It was very important to get them to understand that they will lose games and they will make mistakes. The teams that win are the ones that bounce back from their losses,” Thinkcard said. “We showed our grit against Golden Guardians, and we grew mentally because it’s tough to play a series when your season is on the line. I’m glad they got to experience this, and we’re going to get more playoff experience in general.”

Read more: Burn it all down: How CLG rose from the ashes to be competitive in the LCS again

Photo credit: Colin Young-Wolff / Riot Games via ESPAT

For the doldrums to be lifted and to have a winning atmosphere form, it needs to start from the organization’s vision. CLG brought together a coaching foundation with a history of working and crafting together in Thinkcard and Croissant in addition to former players for the positional coaching spots. CLG built a lineup with relatively low playoff experience but very similar playstyles and incredible potential to progress past the label of an individual standout at their role.

All that was needed was time, experience and patience for everything to work out. As Thinkcard said, the organization did not put pressure on them to produce results and kept the message of day-to-day improvement as the priority. CLG set a bar but did not enforce a finite expectation and allowed the roster to just think for itself and improve on its own.

With the removal of short-term and long-term pressures, the CLG coaching brain trust was allowed to instill confidence in its players by letting them make their mistakes and play their game. In addition to that, the edge to CLG’s play and success might just lie in their drafts and champion select phase of the game. After a stellar first week when the team was undefeated, CLG’s compositions reflected their eagerness to take down as many teamfights as possible with the scaling to come back if faced with a deficit.

“Our biggest help to players is in laning phase, but primarily how the compositions can function in a 5v5. Our main job is to get everyone on the same page as well as introduce flexibility into our team environment,” Croissant said. “We try to guide our players to certain flex picks, and it’s not by chance that we’ll be good on specific champions. Some teams have caught up to that curve, but they haven’t picked up all our picks, and we’re still consuming what other teams are picking and how they’re playing.”

Read more: CLG Dhokla: ‘I wanted to prove to everybody that I could make it back’ to LCS

Photo credit: Tina Jo / Riot Games via ESPAT

“We have very aggressive players, and depending on our compositions, we must change the way we approach, but that speaks on the team’s versatility,” Thinkcard said. “They understand what our teamfight conditions are now, and it’s all due to the players’ hard work.”

Thinkcard highlighted Philippe “Poome” Lavoie-Giguère and Juan “Contractz” Garcia and their immense growth from the last split to this one as one of the biggest reasons for the team’s success. He pointed out Poome’s vision game and communication was night and day in comparison to the beginning of the year as well as his understanding of the game plan to gather the team on the same page. As for Contractz, his approaches and overall direction in the game is more calculated toward what he needs to go for. The fruits of Contractz’s improvement were evident on Wednesday when he received the LCS Most Improved Player Award.

It is the small level ups such as watching as many VODs as possible to playing as many compositions as you can to improve to the approach to solving a new patch that can mean the difference between watching the playoffs and succeeding in the playoffs. CLG can truly play spoiler and potentially take over one of the top spots in the LCS that they once occupied. But, as the coaches say repeatedly, this is a day-by-day operation, and it’s getting better every time they play. To the next opponent standing in its way, it could be a tougher match than initially planned.

“In the lower bracket, we get to experiment more in our drafts, and we didn’t show our top priorities so far. I don’t think anyone took the loss against Cloud9 like we missed our shot. They owned up to the opportunity just like any of our losses during the regular season,” Croissant said. “Moving forward, all our players have that mentality, and they understand that this experience can only serve them to be better.”

It just might be time to start believing in CLG again.

Lead photo credit: Colin Young-Wolff / Riot Games via ESPAT