Coming into the season, one of the biggest talking points in the LCS surrounded the role swap of Golden Guardians’ Keith. A long time Academy ADC with some LCS experience with TSM, Cloud9, and Echo Fox, he was never able to find any footing in the LCS. Give any explanation that you want for why that is, it ultimately comes down to the fact that he just isn’t good enough.

In the offseason, Golden Guardians released their announcement of this role swap in a video that basically confirmed they didn’t even know what they were doing. It seemed as if their only plan was to acquire highly sought after Vulcan, formerly of Clutch/Dignitas. I refuse to believe that they were surprised about not being able to get him. They mention that they also missed on Hakuho. After that they float some names around (ex: Big) before just deciding to give Keith the chance and the starting role in the LCS.

So far it has gone horribly, to put it lightly. Keith currently leads the league in deaths while also looking completely brainless at times. His Kill Participation is 3rd lowest in the league, better than Kumo and Huni (who has yet to play his 4th game). To be fair, Inero did say he wanted a good mechanical support who could help FBI get leads in lane. FBI currently sits 3rd in GD10 and 2nd in CSD10 (gold differential and CS differential at 10 minutes, per Oracle’s Elixir). Those numbers are pretty significantly better than they were in Summer 2019 when FBI was playing with Huhi.

Maybe there is hope that this gets better, but as of right now it’s been an absolute disaster. It’s not even like there were no other suitable supports they could’ve used while testing the Keith role swap in academy. Serviceable (not great still) supports who have all been in the Golden Guardians organization are currently playing in academy: Olleh, Huhi, and Matt. Big isn’t even on a team right now. Are these game changing supports that will instantly make GG better? Absolutely not, but they are at least better than Keith.

I’m not quite sure what their plan even was with this move. Are they thinking they could try to win games? Are they just throwing stuff against the wall and seeing what sticks? Is this a cry to their owners to say “Look at all this North American talent that isn’t good”? I have no clue how this happened, or what the plan was. I’m just not seeing what they were trying to accomplish. For that reason, it’s time to end the Keith experiment, at least in the LCS. If they wish to continue to try it out in Academy, I won’t stop them. Luckily for them, Spring Split doesn’t matter for reaching Worlds, but I don’t think they’re going to be much improved for Summer.