LCK/LPL/LMS Spring Split: Playoffs

Swift contraataca:

Swift claims Doinb was exaggerating by saying he picked whatever he wanted. Coach states he can understand Doinb's feelings, but that it's pretty acceptable for players to make their own decisions.
Swift did refuse to play with Doinb. He felt Doinb was being a drama queen and selfishly focusing on streaming, and that he kept making extravagant demands of the management.
Doinb had a fight with Swift and Peco after their loss to LGD that led to his benching. Swift claims they had previous conflicts, naming Doinb refusing to go to morning meetings as an example.
In response to Tom's post, Swift claims he was just teasing Peco. Peco also agrees with this. Swift also states he has no authority over who plays, and that he didn't sign his contract until QG agreed not to have a sub jungler.

La entrevista entera:

cyn: i really want to sleep, so this is a rather hurried translation of 15w’s interview with swift on the doinb vs swift fiasco. i’ll fix it up in the morning, please forgive typos and awkward wording until then.

tl;dr - swift claims doinb is a drama queen who only cares about money.

[there is a fairly long introduction to the controversy here that i’ll translate later. if you’re new to this whole drama, i suggest reading the reddit posts on doinb’s weibo post and tom’s facebook post.]

First, the interviewer asked Swift what he thought about Doinb’s Weibo post.

Q: Doinb said you didn’t listen to the coach’s pick-bans and chose your champions as you saw fit. What do you think of that?

Swift: About the information he posted, most of it is untrustworthy. You can ask the coach about picks and bans. During the pick-ban phase, I will take the initiative to share my thoughts but I wouldn’t specifically tell the coaching staff what to do, and I wouldn’t just pick what I wanted.

Q: About picks and bans, is it mostly from the coaches?

Swift: Picks and bans are discussed by both the coaching staff and the players. The coaches will share their thoughts ahead of hand, for example, they’ll suggest two champions and debate which one is better with the player. This is all the result of that discussion, not the choice of a single person.

On picks and bans, the interviewer asked the person with the most authority, the tactical coach Cui.

Q: Who decides the picks and bans for QG?

Cui: It’s mostly decided after we discuss with the players.

Q. Did Swift ever not listen to the coaching staff and pick his own champions, conflicting with the coaches?

Cui: All players have champions they want to play, and out of ten times there might one or two times where they’d pick the champions they wanted to play. This kind of situation is very common in the four years I’ve been coaching.What Doinb was talking about might be this kind of situation, but this is something I can understand.

There are differences in the way players and coaches think. I’m not unsatisfied with it, it’s just that both sides think differently. Being able to come up with their own thoughts on their own volition, like former SSW Mata, SSB Heart, or now Swift, this kind of player is pretty good in a coach’s eyes. The things the coaching staff can’t think of, the players can come up with.

I always hope that the compositions we use in scrims will be used in actual matches, but not everything can go as planned. Sometimes there are some differences in opinion that can’t be avoided. But for Doinb to be upset over supporting the coach’s opinions but not actually carrying them out, I can understand his feelings.

Afterwards, the interviewer thoroughly investigated the statement of ‘If Doinb plays, I won’t play.’

Q: Did you ever say that if Doinb played, you wouldn’t play?

Swift: I never said that during practices. After 3/26 I said to the management that I had no way to continue playing with Doinb.

Primarily it was because I heard Doinb saying to the coaches, 'I can earn a lot of money by streaming, I don’t want to be under this much stress playing professional.’ I felt he focused more on streaming, which was really selfish. LOL is a five-man game, but Doinb only thought about himself.

Afterwards, I also heard the manager said, that after Doinb had a large audience for his stream, he raised unreasonable demands with the team about the split from streaming. He demanded an answer by 3/19, before the match with IG, or else he wouldn’t play. Doinb was subbed out because he raised unreasonable demands with the management, not because of me, I don’t have this kind of power.

From what this interviewer knows, 3/26 was the date Doinb, Swift, and the QG team officially had a conflict. As for what happened on this day, Swift had a lot to say.

Swift: After we lost to LGD on 3/25, on the morning of the 26th we had a meeting to discuss the match. The approximate contents of that meeting was, Doinb said to Peco, 'I first-picked Lulu for teamfights, why didn’t we pick Sivir next but rather the other team got her, so you could only pick Kalista. I sacrificed myself for the team but you didn’t carry the team.’ Doinb repeatedly emphasized, 'I picked Lulu and you didn’t pick Sivir, so what was the point of me picking Lulu?!’ But the week before the match, Peco had said he wanted to pick later to counter the other team, and the coaches and players had agreed with him.

Afterwards, Doinb and Peco kept fighting, Doinb was very agitated, I said there was another match in two days, fighting like this would influence everyone’s mentality, and then I stopped their argument. Doinb said he had to make himself clear, so I didn’t say anything. In the middle of the meeting, Doinb walked out.

At 1:30PM, the coaches called another meeting. Because of the arguments in the morning, the entire atmosphere was not very good. After everyone had arrived, Doinb said, 'I just want to say what I want to say, so I came here.’ Afterwards, he said to Peco, 'I’m not angry because of you, I’m angry because of Swift.’ He suddenly said that. It was because Doinb felt that I could say what I wanted to say when I was unsatisfied with my teammates, so why was he interrupted when he did the same?

Also, he felt that our team’s toplane and jungle didn’t put the team first, he was practicing Zed and Quinn mid but complained that since the jungler couldn’t play AP champions, he couldn’t use the AD midlaners he was practicing. After hearing that, I wanted to defend myself, but Doinb directly said, 'I don’t want to talk to you, so you shouldn’t say anything.’ I couldn’t take it anymore, so I went to find the management. Because in the past I had tolerated him many times, but now I couldn’t take it anymore.

After saying this, although Swift hadn’t explained all of the conflicts he’d had with Doinb, under the questioning of the interviewer, Swift told the whole story.

Swift: Before QG was purchased by NB, I’d already had conflicts with Doinb, it was very harmful to our relationship, but neither of us talked about it. I’ve also blamed my teammates before, said whatever I wanted to say, but I feel I wasn’t very mature then but just really wanted to win. But after QG was purchased, we had a better management and coaching system, so things got a lot better.

At first everyone performed very well, during the matches, our team would all leave from our gaming base, but Doinb’s house was very close to the competition venue and very far from our base. So the coach said, if you can make it on time, we can let you leave from your house. At first the coach set a rule, arrive at the practice room at 9AM, Doinb also has to arrive then, then we’ll all meet together and get warmed up. When at the beginning of the season we were on a winning streak, the head coach said because we performed very well and we might be very tired on the day of the match, so they got rid of the morning meeting and Doinb also didn’t need to come to the base but could go from his house to the venue. When QG started doing poorly and was on a losing streak, the coaches said they wanted to reinstate the morning meetings.

Doinb didn’t agree, he kept repeating, 'I’ve done all I was supposed to do, I show up to the venue on time, I don’t understand why I have to go back to the base to meet up.’ But Doinb had previously promised that he would uphold the coaches’ plans. I was unhappy with this, but I didn’t directly say it. The head coach said to Doinb, 'This is your privilege, not your right. Since the team is doing poorly we have to restart the morning meetings.’ But Doinb was unwilling to concede ground, and in the end he never went to the meetings in the base. Because of him, the coach felt he couldn’t let one player have special privileges, so these morning meetings were never held.

About this, when the interviewer talked to QG.Peco, he also mentioned his dissatisfaction, 'The conflict with Doinb was because he wouldn’t come to the base for meetings!’

Afterwards, the interviewer asked Swift whether Doinb had conflicts with other team members. Swift then revealed a Wechat conversation between Doinb and V.

Swift: One day, Doinb arrived at the base at 9AM, before scrims everyone would be playing ranked, and then Doinb started streaming. It was especially loud. V was unhappy with that, so he complained to the coaching staff. The coaching staff also said they would pay attention to the issue. When it was night, Doinb sent V a Wechat message saying, 'If you’re unhappy with me, you can talk to me directly.’ Afterwards, when the players were scrimming, everyone reported what they wanted to pick, the other side chose toplane Fiora, V chose Pantheon because he wanted to try it out, the other teammates also agreed. But that scrim’s results weren’t great, toplane lost hard. Doinb hit the table, said some nasty words in Korean, he felt Pantheon was completely useless.

Afterwards, the interviewer also asked V about this, he said there was this “Wechat” thing, but also said, 'I didn’t specifically target Doinb, just wanted the practice room to be more quiet. But Doinb sent some threatening words to me, I tried to talk some sense into him, he couldn’t argue against me, so he simply stopped talking to me.’ The interviewer then asked V what he thought about Doinb, V said, 'He’s still a little kid, I don’t really have an opinion against him, I don’t love him but I’m also not annoyed by him.’

Then Swift answered what Tom said on the Internet.

Q: Tom said you are the team boss and humiliated Peco, what do you have to say about that?

Swift: To be honest this question, what I can say isn’t very convincing, you can directly ask Peco or the other teammates. But I see that Doinb is often chatting with Tom, Tom might have some misunderstanding, perhaps he’s only heard Doinb’s side. After all, Tom came to QG because I wasn’t originally going to sign with QG, so the club told Tom to come. But after QG satisfied my conditions I signed the contract, I demanded the team not have a substitute jungler before I signed, so Tom couldn’t stay with QG. Perhaps because of this Tom has some complaints about me. Also the team deciding to change midlaners isn’t possibly my decision, only the management and coaching staff have this right.

Of course, the interviewer also confirmed with Peco what Swift had said. Peco laughed and said to the interviwer, 'Usually the two of us like to joke around, I’ll also flame Swift for being bad, it’s just playing around.’ (The interviewer noticed Swift and Peco were very relaxed when chatting with each other, there was no conflict.)

In order to improve the convincingness of this interview, the interviewer then sought the former team leader of QG for an interview.

Q. What do you think about Doinb’s post?

FTL: I think Doinb has his own personal problems. Like last year, when QG first made it to LPL from LSPL, Doinb made some very extravagant salary demands, he isn’t even a player who has gotten great accolades on the international stage, I think it’s a little exorbitant. Also, when we went out for competitions or for events, he’d always demand the club help his girlfriend book tickets and hotels. After QG was purchased by NB, he asked the boss to help him buy a car, and he was very enthusiastic about streaming, because the gifts you get from streaming are solely owned by yourself, so I felt he wholly focused on streaming.

Q: Is he the team boss? Has he come into conflict with the coaches?

FTL: From when I was leading the team, not that I knew of, his relationship was the coaches was still pretty good. (The team leader left the team before IEM.)

[there is also a conclusion here that summarizes the contents of this interview, which i am also too sleepy to translate. it’s 3am okay, have mercy.]