[hkes_show_google_ad] Last week, Esports Heaven had the chance to ask Misfits’ former GM, Ali “Alicus” Saba some questions in relation to League of Legends, Overwatch and his career in esports. Two months shy from being a quarter of a century old, the young man has worked in real estate, managed multiple esports teams, built a top EULCS squad. as well as one of the best Overwatch squads and most recently founded his own team under the eccentric name of “Laser Kittenz”. Last but not least, he’s also discovered he has a real passion for hookah and sushi. Why and how does a young man like yourself go from real estate and corporal management into a full-time career of managing teenagers who play video games for a living? In early 2015, I began to feel unhappy, and started craving a change of scenery, so I quit my job. I’ve always had a passion for esports, so I decided to try my best to make it work out for me. I guess I knew I could always go back after if it didn’t work out. I didn’t want to have any regrets. Follow your dreams, I guess. Even on Ex-Nihilo you had players who went on to be decent LCS level players, or were given a chance to play for good teams, and the same has been true for pretty much all your rosters. Obviously it can’t be luck as it kept happening but you haven’t played at a high level nor an analyst. Why do you think you’ve been so good at picking players and can you describe your process for selecting and trying them out? I’ve always taken on a leadership role, even socially. After you spend a lot of time doing that, you get a feel for who’s best to take under your wing. Obviously, personality and attitude play a great part for me, but I would spend a lot of time watching ladder games, and whenever someone would stand out, I would write their name down. I actually had a list of players back when I was building Challenger teams, and I would spectate a set of players very closely and [ put a ] tick beside their name whenever they had an outstandingly good or outstandingly bad performance — sort of like teachers do when they evaluate their students. Then, I would just glance at it to form a quick “power ranking” based on raw game sense alone. However, getting to know them and observing their organic role when they interact with a team is very important, too. Liquid112 from team Liquid has mentioned in a previous season that his team has access to a system that looks at stats in detail, similarly to traditional pro-sports. Do you use any similar software and do you have any opinion on its efficacy? I use community websites to track match history in both solo queue and pro play. Shoutout to op.gg & EsportsWikis. I hire analysts to track stats in scrims, obviously, so that we can identify prevalent issues and back it up with facts. Other than that, I’m not too fond of using programs or stats for scouting. Solo queue performance statistics don’t really tell the whole story. I would rather watch the players myself and speak to pros to gather opinions on them, their attitude and their potential. I’ve noticed that whenever you’ve picked veterans, it has always been ones who are cerebral rather than intuitive players. Is there any reason for that? You’ve said it yourself — When I recruit veterans, I basically put them on veteran roles within the team. I’ve always preferred hungry rookies where intuition is concerned. Describe for us how the process of signing KaKAO went. We were trialing a lot of high profile junglers in Korea, and I knew KaKAO’s contract was expiring after Worlds while we were there. So, when it expired, I reached out to some contacts in China and realized he was still FA. I asked mutuals for his kakaotalk, we started chatting about our vision and he was happy to come over to meet everyone and play scrims with us. Needless to say, he performed by far the best. He’s unbelievably good, and eager to prove himself again. Whenever KaKAO is asked about why he chose Misfits, you’ll hear him say he loved the passion and environment. This is the exact formula I have in place for all my teams, and it’s definitely a bestseller for top talent. Obviously, he didn’t play too well in LPL and LSPL and didn’t seem to be particularly dedicated. Did you have any concerns for signing him after that, especially on a 2 year contract.? Were you expecting him to perform as well as he has this season? Of course we were expecting him to perform as well as he has this season. He just didn’t fit in, in China. They have a lot of management issues over there, too. Players throw tantrums, destroy keyboards and air conditioners, and seem to get away with it. I wouldn’t be surprised if he experienced at least some form of mismanagement or player misbehavior. [hkes_show_google_ad]