In April 2022, Kyle “Danny” Sakamki, just 18 years old, finally rose to stardom in the US League of Legends. In the finals of the LCS Spring Split, he broke two records and played a dream series. Half a year later, the ADC is apparently in a crisis and is taking time out – before the next final in LoL, of all things.

What is special about Danny?

• Danny is an exceptional talent in North America: the region is notorious for producing hardly any strong young players at home, preferring instead to import veteran stars from South Korea, China or Europe
• But Danny hit the ground running in the LCS, dominating games from the botlane at times.
• He didn’t seem to mind pressure: his strongest game came in the finals, when he broke records for kills in the playoffs and pentakills.

Danny plays outstanding in the regular – Season

Here’s how it went the – Season after: Now, you might think that a player so young would experience a drop in performance after a championship. But ADC continued in the same way in the summer:

• Danny played strong during the – Season , picking up the most kills in the league with 88 (via oracleselixir).
• had a KDA of 7.5, only teammate Vulcan and Midlane legend Bjergsen were higher after 18 games.

LoL’s meta favors ADCs right now, and Danny hit the ground running.

Teams focus on Danny in the botlane

What’s the problem now? In the playoffs now, things are only going so-so for Danny. Because the opposing teams are aiming their game to specifically take Danny out of the game. This in turn seems to unsettle Danny and he makes mistakes.

In the playoffs, his stats have collapsed:

• He already has 35 deaths, 9 more than he had in the entire regular – Season .
• Against Team Liquid, he picked up 11 deaths. As Dot Esports knows, this was due to “poor decisions and positional play.”
• His KDA has now dropped to 3.5 after 14 games.

Despite everything, Evil Geniuses qualified for the finals of the Summer Split because the other lanes stepped up, especially Jungler Inspired delivered.

Many characters from LoL’s Netflix series, Arcane, can also be played in the game:

This is now the decision: As announced by his team Evil Geniuses, Danny will sit out the finals. He is focusing on his “mental health.” They say it takes “a huge amount of courage and self-insight” to make such a decision, especially because his teammates mean so much to Danny.

They say:

Kyle is a part of our family and we will support him in any way we can while he takes some time off. We look forward to welcoming him back when he is ready. To the fans of the LCS community, we say: We ask you to show Kyle nothing but unwavering support and the empathy he deserves from all of us.

Evil Geniuses

This is behind it: It’s really a brave decision, by player and organization, to “protect” probably their most valuable player now. It’s also a smart decision:

• Obviously, every team they face has just set out to forcefully take Danny out of the game and devote all their resources to not letting him flourish.
• While that’s an advantage for the other Lanes, it’s also certainly a huge burden for the 18-year-old to now be the focus and have so many negative experiences to deal with in one game.

Rather than risk a career that started so brightly now taking a dip, surely it’s sensible for Danny to take some time off to gain a different perspective

The – Season is still long for Evil Geniuses anyway, as they have already safely qualified for the 2022 Worlds. And then the 18-year-old will have to face some very different calibers on the botlane, like Viper:

LoL has 2 final opponents at the Worlds that no one has been able to kill yet