“S— on people in lane”: 100T Tenacity talks 2023 LCS season

Fresh off of his first game as an LCS starter, Milan “Tenacity” Oleksij took time to chat about playing with LCS veterans, how he wants to play, and his thoughts on the league.

100 Thieves’ first game in 2023 LCS was a one-sided loss to Cloud9, but that doesn’t stop one of the team’s new players from keeping a positive attitude. Rookie top laner Tenacity spoke with WIN.gg about the official beginning of his LCS career. From playing with Soren “Bjergsen” Bjerg and Peng “Yilang” Doublelift to his friendship with Ibrahim “Fudge” Allami, the young talent spoke on his past, present, and future with 100 Thieves.

WIN.gg: This was your first game in the LCS. You’ve been on one iteration or another of 100 Thieves for almost exactly two years, and have been hyped as one of the upcoming top lane talents. How did it feel to play your first official match as an LCS starter?

Tenacity: It’s good. It’s been a long time coming, in my opinion. Today was a bit unfortunate, I definitely had a lot of nerves going into it. In the game my head was all scrambled, but it’s just something to get used to because I haven’t played on stage before. From our scrims we’ve been doing really well, so we all kind of expected to just stomp [Cloud9] today, to be honest. We had some shortcomings, but it’s just some stuff to look past.

You’re now playing with two of the biggest figures in LCS history with very defined styles in Bjergsen and Doublelift. How do you look to find space for your own style when playing with them?

Personally, I think I’m very adaptable. So whatever fits the team dynamic, whatever’s the best for winning, I’ll definitely just mold myself to. If they have to be the leaders, then I’m going to follow along. But honestly, so far, it’s been everyone putting in input. I think probably me, Closer, and Bjergsen are the main shot-callers. I think we’ve found a lot of success with us having the voices in the game.

We’re seeing a pretty fighter-heavy style in LEC and LCS so far. We know there are fighter nerfs coming. How do you think top lane is affected by this, and how will it evolve?

I think the fighters are still going to be played. I know they’re nerfing healing items, the champions themselves, and ADC is getting a huge buff with the Infinity Edge changes. I think top lane is probably going to transition more into tank play later on. Which is fun in itself, tank laning is pretty enjoyable, I think, contrary to popular belief. I’ve definitely been enjoying the bruiser meta, so I will miss it, but I’m down to play some tanks and s— on people in lane.

Unfortunately, you didn’t win today, but how are you feeling about your match against Immortals tomorrow?

Hopefully I got all of the nerves out today and tomorrow should be a clean stomp. They are Immortals after all.

You and Fudge are close friends, how did it feel to face him down for your first LCS game and how will things go differently next time?

I hope next time I actually get the solo kill, it was very, very close in that first fight.

It’s cool. He’s one of my best friends in esports, we share a lot of knowledge about the game and have similar interests. Probably what’s going to happen is we’re going to chill and talk about the game. It’ll be fun. It was cool to play versus him for my first game, he’s one of the better top laners in LCS. It definitely makes for some good entertainment, having some hype players in the top lane.

I think next time it should be different.

this did not age well 💀

— 100T Tenacity (@tenacityna) January 26, 2023

Now that you’ve moved up to LCS, who are you looking forwards to facing?

I’m definitely excited to be versus Ssumday on the opposite side. We’ve always been on the same org, so I think that will be a cool little rivalry there. Probably Ssumday is the person I’m looking forwards to the most.