Blaber Talks How C9 Plan To Not Choke In Playoffs

本站添加: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]I'm joined with C9 Blabber after just barely squeaking out that five game series. Stopping reverse sweeps is so much harder than reverse sweeping and reverse sweeping is already so hard.

[00:00:11]Man, that must have been stressful for you guys.

[00:00:13]Yeah, it was a super intense series. I think I think we had some good moments in the series, but I also think FlyQuest had some good moments, so overall I think I'm just glad we won, honestly.

[00:00:24]I mean, the casters were talking about it during game three, but they were like when game three was kind of already over they're like, "If FlyQuest had won that game two, which honestly that game looked so over." I don't know how you guys pulled that out of the hat.

[00:00:36]Yeah, we should have we should have lost game two. I think game two was hard. I'm not sure what exactly went wrong in the game, so I'll I'll need to watch it, but I felt like we made some we had some bad mistakes.

[00:00:51]Like even though we were behind in the early game, I felt like at some point when I had three items I was extremely strong and we we definitely threw. I can't remember game two specifically now cuz it was so long ago, but I felt like we should not have been in position to lose after after I came back and got some kills.

[00:01:08]It It felt like you guys were doing a really good job at mitigating the picks that FlyQuest could use. It felt like you you guys in general when you play FlyQuest you're always banning out the Nasses. You're not letting them like flex the champions. I think APA said in the post-game interview like he was like that in the past, but he feels like Griffin's really good on his champions, but not on the meta champions.

[00:01:29]But then they pulled out the Shyvana, they pulled out the the Quinn. Were you guys expecting Quinn at all?

[00:01:34]I wouldn't say we were expecting it.

[00:01:36]Like we weren't talking about it that much, but Quinn is just a normal counter to Renekton. Like that's a very classic matchup. It's something that I'm sure Tanders has played a lot in his like lifetime, probably on both sides, so it wasn't like he was too worried about the matchup going into the game and yeah, I think they didn't I honestly any picks today that we didn't expect. Um, I think Quinn was probably the one we thought about the least, but it's not like it caught us off guard, I guess.

[00:02:04]Okay. And you guys actually managed to win those games. Uh, was the strategy like the strategy felt like, "Hey, we're going to play like a stable game."

[00:02:17]And then it seemed like the strategy moved on to, "Hey, we're just going to fight you guys cuz you guys want to fight." Is that actually what you guys had in mind?

[00:02:24]No, I think I think in game three, um, I mean, I think there was a lot of gameplay problem game three, but I also didn't really like, I guess, the picks that we had. I felt like it was hard to play that game.

[00:02:35]Um, I also just played extremely poorly in game three, to be honest. Um, and for game four, I felt like we over forced a bit too much. I I felt like in game four that they couldn't really fight any of the drakes after the first one.

[00:02:49]Like, the weakness of them picking a team comp like they picked was that it's very hard for them to five v five. And uh, I felt like if we just fought the second drake and didn't make, you know, something volatile happen in the ball lane, um, where Ian roamed out and they I think they died. I know I know APA made a mistake, he said, like he missed his Q's, whatever, but I feel like if we just played if we just played towards the five v five of the objectives that we would have gone and stole that game very easily. They wouldn't have snowballed like Nocturne got two kills, Ezreal got um, Triforce before Sven got Kraken Slayer, which is like very not normal because Triforce costs more, right? So, uh, I felt like we could have been in a good spot in that game and then after we lost I mean, we just ended up losing the the soul fight and lost the game, right? But, even, yeah. And then game five, I think we played decently well. I can't really remember. I had a bad death level four, which was my bad, but, um, otherwise, I felt like game four was played well from ball lane specifically.

[00:03:48]I think they really carried that game.

[00:03:49]And I was yeah, glad we were able to close that one out.

[00:03:54]I mean, and the fact that you guys closed that out, this is the first time since 2023 that you're going into to a road show in North America. You made it to the finals a few times, but those times there were no road shows. So, you're finally making it out uh to another road show, Arizona this time. Um have you ever been there?

[00:04:10]I've never been to Arizona, but I'm excited to go. It's been a while.

[00:04:14]Yeah, it's been a while. I I Well, I have seen you at road shows, just not competing. So, I I There's that caveat.

[00:04:21]Um Cloud9 chokers, like playoffs, they they can't do it. There's like all these narratives going into playoffs. A lot of people are like very cautious of Cloud9 because they're like, "Oh, they went undefeated, but it's like fake undefeated. Oh, last split they went undefeated, but then they didn't end up like closing it out."

[00:04:39]There's a lot of worry and a lot of skepticism of Cloud9 during playoffs.

[00:04:45]Are you guys doing anything different about that? Are you guys Is there Is that on the back of your minds? I'm I'm sure at this point it it is something that weighs on you guys.

[00:04:53]Um I mean, regarding the choking thing like or like what's considered choking like um I think that it's just not something we can really think about. Like it's not going to help us to think about like oh, we lost these last couple of finals. Like let's play worse now or like differently in some sort of way.

[00:05:13]Like um we just honestly just do our best. We practice as hard as we can. We make sure we do what we can in our like routines, you know, get enough sleep, eat well, you know, and make sure we can show up on the day. And yeah, this way we can perform at our best. And I think we just try our best. We're not really or at least I can't speak for everyone, but at least I'm not thinking about like, "Oh, we lost the last finals, you know, can we do it this time?" It's I'm just trying my best and I'm trying to work towards a goal. And my goal at this moment is just to win, you know, win the split. So, every day I'm just working towards that goal.

[00:05:49]I guess from the other perspective, if you're consistently having really good performances in the regular season and then in the playoffs, you tend to play a little bit worse. Uh you know, for example, in 2024, you have you fly the not fly with 100 Thieves series um and then like 2025, again, 100 Thieves series and the Shopify series.

[00:06:10]Don't you think that maybe like the fan criticism or the fan opinion of like they should be doing something different because whatever they have been doing the past couple years when it comes to playoffs hasn't been working. Do you think there's any merit to that?

[00:06:24]Um I mean, I I feel like the criticism itself is fair. Just like as fans, it's like you I mean, you see that the team is not performing well and, you know, it's been very similar rosters, I would say.

[00:06:39]Um not not the same. I think we've definitely been changing up players, but it's been it's been similar rosters and then um maybe it hasn't been.

[00:06:47]Only only this year and last year was a similar roster, I guess, cuz 2024 was a completely different roster than last year.

[00:06:53]Um but I mean, I feel like it's fair cuz we've been having a lot of good regular seasons and then we haven't been showing up in playoffs as much. Um and yeah, I mean, I I think the criticism is fair, but I'm not sure what specifically they're looking for in the change. Um but I feel like we are just working as hard as possible to make sure that, I guess, it doesn't happen again.

[00:07:22]Uh and I really want to win this split.

[00:07:25]I know all of my teammates want to win this split and yeah, hopefully we can make it happen.

[00:07:31]Yeah, I I think that's like the million-dollar question. It's like, what change do you want us to do? Like we're trying our best. You know, Fudge at some point was the change they wanted to see.

[00:07:39]That happened. They wanted, you know, Reapered back in. They were really excited and they wanted Reapered gone.

[00:07:44]So, it's like you don't really know what the answer is. Um, which makes it harder to like have a conversation about it without being super emotional, you know? Um, your name has been thrown around. Like it, you know, after the first game of the split on um the Sejuani game that you had, people were like, "Oh my god, Blaber is so washed." And then you have like incredible games where you're just completely smurfing. And then you have the Xin Zhao game against FlyQuest where you go in and die at red buff and you and you're like, "Oh my god, what is Blaber doing?" And then the next game you're smurfing and you're like, "He loves Blaber." You know, so. Yeah, yeah.

[00:08:15]I mean, I've been definitely been having a lot of um I would say like extreme / polarizing gameplay this split. I honestly think I've been playing overall really well this split. Uh, or I would say pretty well. I don't know about really well.

[00:08:27]But I've been having like some specific game catastrophes. Like my Nocturne game was a disaster where I flashed in place.

[00:08:33]My Shroudny game versus Lion obviously was really bad, right? Um, I would honestly say my best game today was also like quite quite poor, so.

[00:08:42]Um Yeah, I mean, I think I've been having a lot of good performances, but there's also been some bad ones and um I mean, I'm I'm trying to work on that, I guess. But I feel like uh, it was a bit unlucky my Nocturne game, to be honest. And I don't know. I think overall I'm just feeling a lot more confident as a player even though I'm making some of these mistakes.

[00:09:05]Um I feel like I'm really good right now and I really trust what I am calling in the game, so.

[00:09:12]Just in general, I just feel very confident. Even if I have bad games like that, I I feel like I can always come back in the game.

[00:09:19]If that makes sense? Yeah, that is one of one of your things. Like you can EQ on Jarvan and die. And then the next game like you're smurfing. Or like even the Xin Zhao game, you can make mistakes and come back from them. Uh, which I think is something very valuable. Uh, last thing I want to ask about is whenever I'm watching Cloud9 content, which they post a lot, which I really appreciate. Often times there's this like Blaber versus the rest of the team. It's like Blaber has five votes and then the rest of the team all have one vote. So even if it's all tied up, like it's still five to four.

[00:09:49]And apparently Dom tends to decide with you most of the time. So there's like jungle conspiracy.

[00:09:54]Um I just want to ask about like the team environment and the differences between maybe last year and this year cuz last year you had two Koreans. Obviously your head coach was was Korean. This you know, Thanatos is the one that's kind of left out being Korean, but it it does seem that there's more I don't know, camaraderie from just from the outside.

[00:10:18]Yeah, I think we're we get along very well as a team.

[00:10:21]Um We've been having good results recently in practice, but for most of this split to be honest, we were doing really poor in practice.

[00:10:29]Really poor as in like 60% win rate, but like really poor just in general. Um like to our standards and but recently we're doing well, but even though we were not doing so good in practice, um I felt like we weren't really down on each other. We kind of just like help each other improve. Like try to give each other feedback. More like less flamy, more feedback style even though we were losing um to I don't know, try to figure out our problems. Like we were really committed to helping each other and figure out our problems. And I was really happy with that. Um and I feel like we're definitely improving now. Like I I do think we're better now than we were during the regular season. Um we've had our fair share of like very big arguments on the team, but I feel like that's very normal um to get very upset when you really believe in something.

[00:11:16]Um and yeah, just it feels good to play on this team right now. I've been I have very strong opinions myself as well. So maybe it feels like uh I'm like to the team that I'm I guess saying a lot, I guess, but um I just believe that like I should fight for what I think is correct and this way, you know, I'm just trying to make the team better, make myself better.

[00:11:39]Yeah, that makes sense. And dude, if 60% is your like we're doing really poor as a Shopify fan if I hear we're doing 60% it comes out like, "Oh my god, we're smurfing." But but it's like kind of misleading cuz like that's 60% but you include like when we scrim load the lower tier teams, right? Like we'll win most of our games against them and then we'll have like a bad win rate against like TL or Lion for example. Um so it's like a bit misleading a stat cuz it's like kind of skewed by the wins we get on against the lower tier teams.

[00:12:09]Okay, that makes sense.

[00:12:11]All right, that was all I had for you.

[00:12:12]Thank you so much.

[00:12:14]Congrats again making it to Arizona.

[00:12:15]Hope Hope to see you there. I don't know if I'm making it out there. I know you're making it there so I hope to [laughter] see you there and good luck in the next series.

[00:12:23]Yeah, thank you so much. All right, peace man.