The game has changed. It’s not what it used to be.

One player used to be able to carry a League of Legends team. Now, it’s impossible.

These words become a mantra when one player rises above the rest, yet his team still languishes at the bottom of the standings.

Discerning how much a team affects a League player’s statistics and in-game performance has become increasingly difficult through the years. The assertion that the game has changed to become more team-oriented and less about individual play is not controversial, it’s simply a summation of the path that Riot Games has purposefully taken — a resistance to the natural avulsion of individual play, diverting to teamwork instead.

Individual standouts aren’t impossible to find, they’re just more difficult to evaluate. How much the team influences a player’s visibly strong season — the SK Telecom T1 Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok effect — is always rife with debate. With LoL’s increasing focus on the unit of five, it should be. This is a debate worth having.

And there may be no better example of the strain between individual greatness and team success than Nam “LirA” Tae-yoo, the best jungler in the 2017 North American League Championship Series Spring Split. It’s not even close.

He was also on the last-place team of the regular season, Team EnVyUs.

View photos nV jungler Nam “LirA” Tae-yoo in Week 9 of the NA LCS (Jeremy Wackman) More

The curious case of nV LirA

Leads all NA junglers in First Blood percentage (49 percent).

Leads all NA junglers in gold differential at ten minutes (271).

Leads all NA junglers in CS differential at ten minutes (8.0).

Leads all NA junglers in CS per minute (5.8).

Leads all NA junglers in earned gold per minute (235.9).

Rarely do statistics so succinctly reflect an individual’s in-game prowess. Statistics require context. That context usually involves another player on the team behind the scenes. Pay no attention to the Faker behind the curtain.

LirA’s 2017 NA LCS Spring performance challenges the boundary between individual and team play and how we perceive both. It’s not unheard of that a player from a lower-tier team will have a strong regular season showing. If anything, an abysmal team will make a strong player more visible.

nV aren’t an abysmal team. They’re disorganized and tend to fall apart in the mid game, despite strong starts from LirA that, on average, gave them a 513 gold differential at 15 minutes. Only Echo Fox and Immortals were higher, and they too possessed strong early-game junglers who have the ability to dictate pace in Matthew “Akaadian” Higginbotham and Joshua “Dardoch” Hartnett.

All three teams finished outside playoff contention.

Team EnVyUs slid to the last-place spot and recently underwent the grueling task of earning back their spot in the LCS, playing 13 games across three series this weekend. Throughout the series, nV struggled with their mid-game lane assignments, mid-game decision making, and a host of other problems that had less to do with individuals and more to do with team communication.

View photos When LirA had visa issues, mid laner Noh “Ninja” Geon-woo was nV’s substitute jungler. (Jeremy Wackman) More

The mystery of nV

For LirA, most things come back to communication and playing time.

“The fact that we had visa issues [early in the split] was really rough, and it was hard for me when I came back,” LirA told Yahoo Esports.

“After the two weeks, travel issues, and not being able to play with the team — I couldn’t communicate well because I don’t speak English that much. I started catching up and we started getting better but, the thing is, all of the other teams had already practiced together and had good synergy together.”

Story continues