TSM Announce League of Legends Roster For LCS 2023

TSM announced its 2023 League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) roster on Tuesday, November 29, via a Twitter post. As confirmed, the new-look lineup will feature three two new players who the North American esports organization hopes will help it redeem itself for poor performances in 2022.

TSM initiated a roster overhaul this offseason following the departure of superstar jungler Mingyi “Spica” Lu and ADC Edward “Tactical” Ra, forcing the North American esports organization to start fresh with new talent. To fill in the gaps, TSM brought on ADC Toàn “Neo” Trần and Korean jungler Lee “Bugi” Seong-yeop, previously of Dignitas Academy and Estral Esports, respectively.

The Korean jungler joins TSM as an experienced player, who started his career in June 2017 with SCARZ, and has since played for SSG Legends, Machi Esports, and Flash Wolves, with who he won LMS 2019 Spring Playoffs.

Following a successful split in the LMS, Bugi left for V3 Esports in Japan, and after one split traveled overseas to join the South American squad, Furious Gaming, who he led to LLA 2021 Opening Playoffs finals and finished the year with a bronze medal from LLA 2021 Closing Playoffs.

For the 2022 season, Bugi joined Furious Gaming’s local rivals, Estral Esports, with who he won the LLA Closing regular season and reached the finals of LLA 2022 Closing Playoffs, where he came one map short of qualifying for the LoL World Championship.

ADC Neo, on the other side, recently played for Dignitas – both the main lineup and academy roster. And even though he is a fairly inexperienced player, Neo was widely known as one of the biggest NA prospects – a tag he’ll now have to live up to as a part of the most storied NA LoL esports teams.

Notably, Neo hasn’t won a single title in the academy leagues, but he has helped Dignitas reach semifinals in the LCS 2022 Lock In, placed fourth in NA Academy 2022 Summer, and ended the year with a runner-up finish at LCS Proving Grounds 2022 Summer.

Seeing TSM completely revamp its LoL division makes a lot of sense following a disastrous performance in the 2022 season. As the most successful organization in the LCS history, TSM endured the worst season to date in 2022.

After crashing out of the LCS 2021 Championship, TSM made several changes to its LoL division ahead of the 2022 LCS, but even that hasn’t helped the team achieve anything meaningful. TSM kicked off the year with a ninth-10th place finish in the LCS 2022 Lock-In, granted the team attended the tournament with its academy lineup.

Still, even after fielding its main LCS roster, success was hard to come by. In the LCS 2022 Spring, TSM produced the organization’s worst regular-season result to date, and finished the season in ninth place with a 5-13 record.

Things hardly improved in the LCS 2022 Summer, in which TSM ended with a 6-12 record, which was good for a seventh-place finish. Still, TSM finished two wins above the cutoff line and qualified for the playoffs, where they had a chance to re-qualify for the LoL Words for the first time since 2020.

But their efforts were in vain, as TSM didn’t make it far. On a more positive note, TSM eliminated FlyQuest from the LCS playoffs with a 3-2 victory in the first round but then came one win short of beating Evil Geniuses, thus finishing the season in fifth-sixth place, two wins short of reaching the season-culminating event.

Although TSM’s new-look roster hardly screams LCS champions quality, seeing TSM start fresh makes a lot of sense as the organization looks to hunt redemption in the league’s 13th season.