LoL: 18-year-old becomes an overnight star – Now he skips the finals, focusing on “mental health”

In April 2022, 18-year-old Kyle “Danny” Sakamki finally rose to stardom in the US League of Legends. In the final of the LCS Spring Split he broke two records and played a fantastic series. Six months later, the ADC is apparently in a crisis and is taking a break – just before the next final in LoL.

What is special about Danny?

• Danny is an exceptional talent in North America: The region is notorious for hardly producing any strong young players in its own country, instead preferring to import veteran stars from South Korea, China or Europe
• But Danny was able to take off immediately in the LCS and at times dominated games from the botlane
• He didn’t seem to mind the pressure though: His strongest game came in the Finals, when he broke records for playoff kills and pentakills

Danny is excelling in the regular season

This is how it went the following season: You might think that such a young player experiences a drop in performance after a championship. But the ADC continued the same in the summer:

• Danny played strong that season, earning the most kills in the league with 88 (via oracle elixir).
• had a KDA of 7.5, only higher than teammate Vulcan and midlane legend Bjergsen after 18 games.

LoL’s meta is favoring ADCs right now, and Danny’s been banging it on.

Teams focus on Danny in the botlane

What’s the problem now? In the playoffs now, things are going so well for Danny. Because the opposing teams align their game to specifically take Danny out of the game. This in turn seems to unsettle Danny and he makes mistakes.

In the playoffs, his stats collapsed:

• He already has 35 deaths, 9 more than he has in the entire regular season.
• He picked up 11 deaths against Team Liquid. As Dot Esports knows, this was due to “poor decision making and positional play.”
• His KDA is now down to 3.5 after 14 games.

Despite everything, Evil Geniuses was able to qualify for the final of the Summer Split because the other lanes came up trumps, especially Jungler Inspired.

You can also play many characters from the Netflix series about LoL, Arcane, in the game:

This is the decision now: As announced by his team Evil Geniuses, Danny will sit out the finals. He focuses on his “mental health.” It is said that it takes “a great deal of courage and self-discipline” to make such a decision, especially since his teammates mean so much to Danny.

It says:

Kyle is part of our family and we will support him in any way we can while he takes some time off. We look forward to welcoming him when he is ready again. To fans of the LCS community, we ask that you show Kyle nothing but the unwavering support and empathy he deserves from all of us.

Evil Geniuses

That’s behind it: It is truly a bold decision by the player and organization to “protect” what is probably their most valuable player right now. It is also a wise decision:

• It seems that every team they encounter right now is determined to take Danny out of the game with all their might and devote all their resources to making sure he doesn’t thrive.
• That’s an advantage for the other lanes, but it’s also a big burden for the 18-year-old when he’s the focus of attention and has to deal with so many negative experiences in one game.

Rather than risk a dip in a career that got off to a great start, it certainly makes sense for Danny to take some time off to gain a different perspective

The season is still long for Evil Geniuses anyway, because they have already qualified for Worlds 2022. And then completely different calibers await the 18-year-old on the botlane, like Viper:

LoL has 2 bosses in the Worlds that nobody has been able to kill yet