New York Subliners star Lamar ‘Accuracy’ Abedi has responded to his team’s critics calling them a “friendship team” after a disappointing start to the Call of Duty League.
When the starting roster of Accuracy, Donovan ‘Temp’ Laroda, Trei ‘Zer0’ Morris, Dillon ‘Attach’ Price, and Tommy ‘ZooMaa’ Paparatto was first announced, it sounded brilliant on paper, but it slowly became apparent as the season progressed that they weren’t performing to the standard they should be.
Many fans thought the substitutes for the Subliners were underwhelming, too, with both Doug ‘Censor’ Martin and Nick ‘Happy’ Suda having been vacant from the pro scene in recent years.
The Subliners were quickly criticized for being a “friendship team,” a term used for picking up players based on social ties rather than in-game ability, and now Accuracy has hit back at that notion in a video posted by the team on April 2.
In the extended version of the video, Abedi talks about his come-up in the Call of Duty scene and the sacrifices he had to make to go pro, but in a short snippet posted to Twitter, he directly calls out people who call New York a “friendship team.”
“Everyone in CoD is basically friends,” he said. “So when I see everyone saying ‘Oh, Subliners are just friends,’ it doesn’t make sense to me. It just makes me think, like, do you guys not want us to be friends?”
Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates on Esports, Gaming and more.
“Do you guys not want us to be friends?”
Accuracy addresses “friendship team” criticisms and talks about his Call of Duty Journey, from winning championships, to being dropped, to his fight to be back on top.@AccuracyLA tells all in #NYSL Origins.https://t.co/gAeoGRSRwZ pic.twitter.com/8oD0OwwETH
— Subliners (@Subliners) April 2, 2020
He went on to explain that as a team you want to have fun with your teammates, you want to enjoy their presence, as you’re spending all day together and working with them for several hours a day.
The response was met with some criticism, with one Reddit user saying that he “misses the point,” while another suggests that “the friendship between him and the team is the only reason why Zer0 is benched and he’s not.”
Accuracy makes a valid point when he says that all teams are – and should be – friends, because you have to get along with these people to gel with them in-game as well as out. Whether fans are pleased with the response, though, is another question.