Why did BC.Game sign asap?
Just for a second, ignore that giant grey elephant in the corner of the room.
It’s a question that is often handwaved away behind the aforementioned giant tusked beast - that BCG want to play in the Asian qualifiers for the Major is unpopular, but obviously the correct decision from a business point of view - but the question remains why him specifically. It could have been any player in the Asian region who would have gotten BC.Game what they wanted, and so it’s interesting that this was the guy who ended up top of the list.
In fact, if you plug the move into the Roster Simulator, it literally asks the same question. Why are you making this move?
So, that’s it then. Terrible move. The Data says so.
Not so fast.
While asap is an awkward fit role wise on this team, the roles didn’t really work anyway. electronic was supposed to be somewhere between second star and support with mzinho picking up the other half of those roles, Magisk as the IGL/hard support type and Senzu as the bona fide star. That has clearly not worked, and there are two solutions to electronic’s under par performance.
The first is to make mzinho more of the second star as he was in The MongolZ and sign a young, malleable player underneath him to be the support player, and the second is to sign a second star. BCG have kind of done neither of those things, but probably see potential in asap as a support player.
asap, despite being the nominal star player on THUNDERdOWNUNDER, is used to being a low resource player. That is quite likely down to the fact that they lose so much that they never get to buy in the sort of events our data tracks (and it is a small sample size), so pinch of salt, but I don’t think he’s going to take guns off of Senzu and mzinho. He doesn’t throw much util, but neither does mzinho anyway. He’s more aggressive than electronic is, and mzinho is, but that’s a role thing. It could be also that they want asap to be aggressive to let mzinho lurk more and free up Senzu to be more of a late round trade fragger, though this is very ‘CSGO meta’.
Stars are aggressive now, rather than second man in.
While asap’s overall rating in our (albeit limited) data sample is middling, it’s quite clearly the best on his team, and his team is really not very good. In domestic competition he’s fantastic and incredibly dominant, and given that BCG want to qualify for the Major via Asia, that might come in useful.
TDU probably bring his rating down just by not being a stable, supportive core, and now he’s joining BC.Ga- ah. Never mind.
I’m of the opinion that asap is going to be moved into that support and maybe even hard support role with Magisk taking more of his old Astralis roles. He’s definitely the least experienced, and will acquiesce to the big names and big egos around him and just try his best to fit in, including being told ‘you’re anchoring B, we can hang out during the game but don’t talk to me at lunch’.
He’s being ‘Grim’d’, basically.
He’s not a natural support player, though he does do some big site anchoring. His T side looks like a normal star rifler, and while he’s an excellent player domestically he’s never been dominant internationally, and he’s 23.
It’s an odd move. If you’re going to go for a young player to mould into the support role, you’d surely go for someone younger. If you wanted a real support player, you’d… well, sign one. Clearly there’s something about asap’s game that Magisk or BCG’s management like.
He’s got firepower, and there’s probably some belief that in a better team he can scale up his production to a tier 2 or tier 1 level, but they’re not going to platform him as the star. It’s possible they actually give him electronic’s roles and keep mzinho as the support player, but that seems like a completely insane decision. mzinho is almost certainly a better player. We can’t be sure until we see both in the same team, technically, but we’ve all got eyes.
It’s worth mentioning that the pool of players who are a. Available, b. Good enough and C. Either younger than asap or a genuinely good support player is minimal. Oh, and D. Speak English. My JamYoung -> BCG dream dies here.
I’m sure BCG would have loved jks, who would have slotted straight into mzinho’s current roles and let him become the second star. There might be some overlap, but jks has proven himself to be exceptionally versatile and unlikely to rock the boat personality wise. He’s the perfect player for them - but probably wasn’t available. He’s on track to qualify anyway and seemingly enjoys being back home. Similarly, INS is an incredibly gifted player who is currently doing hard support roles who could let Magisk and mzinho rejig things, but he’s in a similar boat.
There’s a few Lynn Vision players who speak English, but traditionally Chinese players rarely move out of Chinese teams and you’re looking at CALLM3SU3 probably, who isn’t that great. You might as well gamble on asap, who will be much cheaper and more malleable.
Which is how we ended up on asap. Of the players who fit the criteria - English-speaking, available and not terrible - he’s the best fit. He’s not a support player but he’s likely going to listen to whatever Magisk and s1mple tell him to do (Lord knows I would). He’s not shone internationally before, but he was on a team that held him back and it’s not infeasible that he might scale up with a better team. He’s a good player who won’t cost loads, even if it doesn’t make sense role wise.
It’s not the perfect move, but it’s unlikely to cost BCG a fortune and anything is better than electroNic not changing his roles for a better player.
I don’t love the move, but I don’t hate it either.
