Part 10: Hard Work and Defining the Best Teammate

Tim

What does the best teammate look like?

Boble

They don't necessarily care about the stats that they put up on the board. They want to make sure that they're doing their job on the map as best as they can so that it puts the team in the best position possible to win the game. Winning is above everything else.

The best teammate is selfless. The best teammate is accountable so that when you give them a task, they're going to do it, whether it's in-game or out.

They're reliable, trustworthy, and vocal. I think if you compare a lot of players that have won to players that have not, you'll find that the championship players have a lot of tendencies and traits that the non-winning players don't have. We're fortunate as a team to have guys on our team who have won and been on winning teams, so they can bring in that experience and knowledge and share it across the team.

Tim

What is the most desirable trait in a player?

Boble

The trait I've always valued in a teammate, or really any person generally is how hardworking they are.

Throughout my playing career, I've always preached about putting in outside time into the game. While you do learn a lot going through the first person repetitions of playing, you also have to take a step back and see how your one body on the map influences the big picture.

You learn that by watching VOD, film, other teams, and a lot of tournament footage. There's a saying I'm sure everybody out there has heard that hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard. That's another thing I like to say to my players.

Tim

Can you share a specific story that embodies hard work?

Boble

There is a player in the scene, his name is SpaceLy. He was probably a 13, 14-year-old kid at the time, but he was trying to make it as a pro player.

He took it upon himself to create his own team, which eventually got good placings all things considered in Black Ops one. He started to make a name for himself. More years go by, he's got a lot of solid placings and then I'm not sure exactly what happened but his stock as a player dropped.

Not a lot of teams wanted to pick him up. Not a lot of players wanted to play with him. Going into Black Ops 4, he put a little hodgepodge of a squad together. These were guys that were kind of rejected from the other teams, so it was like the misfits coming together.

Through their hard work they qualified for the Pro League. Their lives pretty much changed for the better. A lot of those guys on the squad that he put together found themselves on franchise teams.

The start of the season was a big unknown for them, but they were able to turn their lives around because of the hard work that they put in. SpaceLy was at the forefront of that.