Los Angeles Thieves make another roster change as they move TJHaly back onto the starting lineup.
The first year for the Call of Duty team, the Los Angeles Thieves, one can argue, has already been a rocky one as the team currently has made the most roster changes this season. For this new week, they made another roster change that has shaken the Call of Duty League to its core.
The benching of Cuyler “Huke” Garland for the second time this season is one of the craziest moves the league has ever seen. Only this time, it was made for the eventual return of Thomas “TJHaly” Haly into the starting lineup for the Thieves. The move, as a whole, was a tough one according to Jordan “JKap” Kaplan, the coach for the Los Angeles Thieves as he talked about the reason why Huke was benched for TJHaly on the Los Angeles Thieves Pre-show.
“It wasn’t a good fit, just watching the game looked way more difficult on all the players, his playstyle is very individual based,” JKap said. “There is a lot of ‘hero’ ball, but I don’t think there was a conscious decision on his end, but it was something we had an issue with which wasn’t any better.”
After the decision was made, many of the fans that supported the team went on to Twitter attacking JKap and Eric “Muddawg” Sanders, general manager of the team, saying how delusional the decision was.
One specific argument that was constantly made was the fact that Huke was only in the starting lineup for a couple of weeks until he got benched, which begged the question,for many fans, if there was enough playtime with the team for Huke to get used to playing with his new teammates?
However, that is not the only thing that Thieves’ fans are angry about. They are angry about the price the team had to pay in order to buy out Huke just to have him be on the bench.
The buyout that was made, as reported by The Flank, is a six-figure sum which is rumored to be around the price of $500,000. If true, this would be one of the biggest buyouts in the league’s history as players are starting to have bigger and bigger contracts throughout the years.
Of course, a major factor in making the decision was the way the team was playing with Huke. Without Huke, the team previously went 12-9 going into the middle of the season. With Huke, the team went 4-4, underperforming in many aspects as they were 1-3 against the top four teams in the league.
After Huke was benched, the Los Angeles Thieves looked like they were in their main form as they defeated the Seattle Surge in a 3-2 victory. This, however, was a tough showing for Huke’s replacement, TJHaly as he had a 0.86 K/D(72-84) in the match.
The Los Angeles Thieves currently in sixth place in the Call of Duty League, fighting for a top-eight spot in the league to make the playoffs.
They certainly have a tough group in this next stage. That being the first-place team, Atlanta FaZe, and rivals, OpTic Chicago. This might be the ultimate test for the team as the league is getting closer and closer towards the end of the season.
The main question that will have to be answered for the fans in this new stage will be whether or not this major move will be a major turnaround for the Thieves or if this will prove to be another blunder change made by the team? Fans will unfortunately have to just wait and see.
Feature Image Courtesy of the Los Angeles Thieves.
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