Matthew ‘Nadeshot’ Haag, the founder and CEO of 100 Thieves, spoke on his podcast about Cloud9 dropping Jaccob ‘yay’ Whiteaker and how the player is currently teamless.
Nadeshot is no stranger to the market around Valorant players as the CEO has blown his team up before and rebuilt it from the ground up. When speaking about the situation around yay, who was dropped by Cloud9 a few months after being signed due to role issues, Nadeshot said the situation was a little weird.
“The whole thing just strikes me as very bizarre,” Nadeshot said.
The former Call of Duty pro said that he would understand if the team did not think things were working out with yay and if the three players that are still on the team wanted him and Anthony ‘vanity’ Malaspina out of the lineup.
However, that doesn’t seem to be what happened with Cloud9, with many suggesting that the North American organization parted ways with yay to balance its books.
“To me, it’s like, [Cloud9] probably have the best North American Valorant player on [their] team, they had to have had a conversation with him and his representation like, ‘Listen, we want you here. We can’t afford this salary. Do you want to renegotiate in good faith, stay on the team, and work through this with us? If you don’t, totally fine. You can go on your way, we’ll let you go away free of charge. But if not, let’s try to make this work,’” the 100 Thieves CEO said.
On Reddit, Cloud9 CEO Jack Etienne insisted the organization is “in a great place financially” but admitted that he is “controlling costs” during this period of economic turmoil.
Nadeshot speculates on yay’s departure from Cloud9
The CEO also commented on the fact that yay was not picked up by another team before the mid-season transfer window closed and brought up Call of Duty pro Chris ‘Simp’ Lehr to prove a point. According to him, every team in the Call of Duty League would jump at the chance to land the Atlanta FaZe star.
“If something doesn’t seem right, normally it’s not right,” Nadeshot said.
100 Thieves were in the running to sign yay in the 2022-23 offseason, but the organization went with teenage prodigy Matthew ‘Cryocells’ Panganiban as he was the “best fit” for their young squad.
While yay has not been able to find a home, vanity has landed at Shopify Rebellion. Meanwhile, the former OpTic Gaming star has been playing ranked and posting highlight clips to Twitter.
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