As I promised, here is my end of regular season awards for the 2015 LCK Spring Split. It follows the same rules, format and categories as LoL Esport’s awards, with one additional category, so it should be easy enough to follow. I’ve decided to go for one winner and two runners up in each category, mostly because it got a big participation award for my liking. This list is entirely my own and I’ve thought very hard about it, measuring equally performances in week 1 all the way to week 13.

Purely because awards, however low profile, should be about celebrating the good and not condemning the bad, I will be electing to not excessively discuss why high profile players didn’t get nominated.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Due to the low amount of time between the end of the regular season and the start of the playoffs and a hectic schedule in my personal life, I was late to release this article. While it’s not ideal I still feel this article was worth publishing, if only for the discussion I hope it will create. Please be aware that the playoff performance and results did not affect this article in any way shape or form.

Most Valuable Player: Smeb from ROX Tigers

Not only were Smeb’s champion pool, ability to snowball advantages, teamfighting and map movements second to none, but his consistency and ability to adapt to the meta were as good as you can ever expect from a player. Smeb positioned himself as the primary carry of the ROX Tigers, who finished the regular season in 1st place with a 16 - 2 record (34 - 7 which is a 87.5% overall win rate). No one made more individual outplays, dominated more teamfights or created more pressure than Smeb did. Smeb isn’t just the best top laner in the world, he’s currently the best player in the world and the greatest top laner in the history of the game.

Also while it wasn’t at all a factor in my decision, Smeb is also the primary shotcaller of the far and away best team in the world.

Runners Up: Score from KT Rolster, TrAce from Jin Air Greenwings

Score is the premier thinking man’s jungler. While Peanut has certainly been outstanding and extremely entertaining, Score was a relentless artist throughout LCK Spring. His pathing, gank timings, teamfighting and vision control have been exceptional and he has shown no real blind spot in his champion pool. Yes, Score has had a few bad series, but the depth and intelligence that he has given to KT Rolster is the primary factor in their 2nd place regular season finish. Score’s creative vision for the jungle is as innovative as it is all-encompassing. My only real criticism of Score has been that he sometimes gets mechanically outplayed by younger players, but Score’s mechanics have, at the very least, been extremely serviceable.

TrAce’s improvement from the end of 2015 to the start of 2016 is one of the most impressive and largest I have ever seen. Not only was TrAce the most efficient top laner in LCK (2nd lowest gold share and 3rd highest damage share), he also innovated global trends and fundamentally changed the global toplane meta. At 26 years old (far and away the oldest player in LCK), TrAce has become wise in his platinium years and aged like a fine wine. Extremely safe and measured, TrAce is almost never caught out or the victim of a gank. The primary carry for Jin Air Green Wings throughout the regular season, even in their 4 series losing streak, TrAce never looked poor.

Outstanding Rookie: Bdd from CJ Entus

As the most hyped rookie of 2016, it was almost impossible for Bdd to live up to the hype created for him. Already given the name ‘Faker 2.0’ by fans, Bdd was set up to fail if your expectations were for him to match Faker’s debut. Nevertheless, Bdd did have a good debut season. While initially starting as a pocket pick, Bdd popularized Azir around the world. Replacing Sky wasn’t a tall task, but Bdd still brought some new life to CJ Entus. Considering he had the worst jungler in the LCK at his side, Bdd exerted a decent amount of pressure and laned well. Adapting well to CJ’s distinctive playstyle, Bdd had about as good as a debut season as you can expect. Bdd has no serious flaws and, with time, will likely become a world class midlaner.

Runners Up: Crash from Longzhu Gaming, Untara from CJ Entus

Crash is probably the best ‘worst player’ in Korea. Crash showed excellent mechanics and insane aggression, which were ultimately his undoing in every game he lost. To pull a crash is to successfully gank a lane and then run into the enemy jungle, get collapsed on and give the enemy double buffs. For every good thing Crash did, he quickly followed with two bad things. That said, Peanut had a lot of the same issues in his debut split and it’s probable that Crash will able to improve and develop as a player.

Untara really gets this award because the other rookies were pretty terrible. Untara is far from a premier top laner, but he did improve in almost all areas and is worth watching throughout Summer 2016.

Best Coaches: NoFe and Ssong from ROX Tigers

I judge coaches on 4 areas: draft phase, roster decisions, how they play the laneswap and overall improvement throughout the season. It’s safe to say that ROX’s coaches achieved a top mark in all areas. Peanut to ROX will probably go down as one of the greatest roster decisions ever, especially when you consider the bad publicity that surrounded Peanut at the time.

Runners Up: Han Sang-yong and Chun Jung-hee from Jin Air Green Wings, Reach and Cain from CJ Entus

While KT and SKT had good seasons, all things considered -- that’s kind of a given when you look at their performance in years past and the players they have on their roster. KT’s coaches had a few too many howlers of a draft phase and continually decided to use Hachani despite him being probably the worst support player in Korea.

Considering SKT’s 2015 performance, a 3rd place regular season finish is not acceptable for SKT or their coaching staff. Also, I hypothesize that without their ability to regain confidence and practice on stage at the IEM World Championships, SKT might have come in 4th or 5th place.

When you look at the player’s on CJ Entus, their evolution throughout Spring and some of the impressive upset wins they were able to take, you have to give Reach and Cain a lot of credit. I think the 8th place finish is a bit unfair to CJ, who definitely looked like a contender for the playoffs until the meta changed against their favor. Ultimately, CJ Entus easily avoided relegation and proved they can compete with the big teams, which is all you could realistically expect from them at this point in the year.

Most Valuable Returning Import: Kramer from CJ Entus

At the start of 2016 Kramer was seen as a talent but arrogant and known for his poor teamwork and terrible itemization. Benched from a Taiwanese team after a single game at the 2015 World Championships, the fans were counting down the days until Ghost, CJ Entus’ substitute ADC, turned 17 in a similar fashion to the Sky and Bdd situation.

Kramer rejected this destiny and quickly established himself as the primary carry of CJE and an elite ADC. While Kramer did have the highest gold share of any player in the league, he showed that this gold was well spent with the highest damage share by a considerable margin. Yes, Kramer still needs to work on his champion pool (he only really looked good on Corki, Kalista and Ezreal), but he demonstrated some immaculate teamfighting and was the biggest factor in CJ’s win conditions.

Runners Up: Fly from KT Rolster, Blank from SK Telecom T1

Fly is the ultimate utility midlaner. Fly may have had his stumbles, but as the season’s gone on, he’s emerged as an important facilitator for Score, Ssumday and Arrow, and truly refined his style of play. Fly has demonstrated an extremely large and distinctive playstyle, a solid game sense and improved laning over his predecessor. Adapting well to the teleport meta, Fly has showed that the KT coaches’s trust was well-founded.

Blank would’ve been in contention to win rookie of the split if it wasn’t for his stint on StarHorn Royal Club subbing for an injured Insec. Despite being legitimately awful in his first few games, post IEM WC Blank actually managed to become an asset to SKT. Fitting the meta far better than Bengi, Blank’s champion pool and playstyle have given SKT a lot more options in their strategy and resource allocation. Blank might be far from a premier jungler, but he is improving.

All Pro Teams

1st Team: Smeb, Score, Faker, Bang, Gorilla

I covered my personal feelings on Peanut vs. Score earlier in the article, so there’s not a lot of elaboration or explanation necessary. Faker might not have received my MVP nomination, but he’s still the best midlaner in LCK. Bang and Gorilla are both far and away the best at their role, with both of them being number 4 and 5 on my MVP nominations.

2nd Team: TrAce, Peanut, Crown, Pray, Madlife

Peanut was the biggest breakout star of 2016 and such an exciting and fun player to watch. Whether it’s his extraordinary mechanics, relentless aggression or tendency to show boat and style on his opponents, Peanut was the player that every Korean fan was talking about. While last year Crown was a rising talent, this year Crown has been impressive and put in more hard carriy performances than any other LCK midlaner not named Faker. Pray might benefit from having an amazingly stacked roster around him, but he’s still a wicked player and a big carry threat on his team. Madlife had a renaissance split and looks to be better than he ever has been.

3rd Team: Ssumday, Lira, Coco, Kramer, Wraith

Ssumday had a predictably good split overall, but he did have some real poor matches, which meant TrAce was able to edge him out. He still had a high game impact, showed a pretty wide champion pool (though please don’t play Kennen again) and made some really key plays. Lira was great this split, which was weird because he’s been pretty underwhelming up until this year. Great mechanics, really impressive gank timings, a few impressive hard carry performances and a level of consistency that put him above Ambition, Winged and Chaser. Coco, despite a few rough games, was probably the best performing player on Longzhu overall. Coco still isn’t at the form that he was during 2015, but he’s getting closer to regaining it. Wraith is criminally underrated and an immense asset to Samsung Galaxy. Considering he was playing with two rather luckluster ADCs, Wraith won lane far more than he should have. His eye for a strpmg initiation is impressive and Wraith had one of the better vision controls in LCK.

Connect with the author for more LCK coverage at @gosickboy_.

Photo Credit: Fomos, Inven, Daily Esports and CJ Entus