Lazarus is reportedly adding yay to its CS:GO team
Reports indicate Lazarus has signed Jaccob “yay” Whiteaker to its Counter-Strike: Global Offensive roster. The North American rifler would act as a replacement for Michael “dapr” Gulino. The young in-game leader announced his departure from the organization in late May. As of now, he is still looking for offers.
About yay’s career
Yay has managed to show some promise throughout his career with multiple kinds of rifles. Despite that, his foray into professional CS:GO has been plagued with ups and downs all the way from the beginning. The American player started playing with the best already four years ago, in 2015. He performed for various North American organizations such as Noble Esports or eUnited for a two-year period.
Complexity Gaming, however, only decided to give him a try in July 2017. His time with Jason Lake’s organization was his career’s absolute prime. At the FACEIT Major London 2018, Complexity Gaming managed to reach the top eight. At the start of the tournament, nobody would have bet that yay and co. would obtain such an amazing result. Along the way, they defeated powerhouses like Fnatic and Berlin International Gaming thanks to their much-preferred map pick, Inferno.
A few months after the major, however, Complexity was back to dealing with a lack of competitive success. This time, the organization decided that yay should step out of the roster, and consequently, he did just that. Not able to find a stable home, mix teams such as Bad News Bears have been Whiteaker’s home during the last few months. Now, however, he seems to be getting another opportunity thanks to Braxton “swag” Pierce’s roster.
What will happen to Lazarus going forward?
Dust2.us was the first website to report a link between yay and Lazarus. It is Dexerto, however, that now claims to have “multiple sources close to the team” who confirm that yay will be joining the organization during the next few days. Although yay would officially be replacing dapr, he would not be able to play the Starladder Berlin Major qualifiers with his new teammates.
According to Starladder’s rule set, should he want to compete at the Major qualification process, he would have to do so with his former team, Bad News Bears. It is not only yay who could not compete at the biggest tournament of them all, but also his infamous teammate, swag. The former iBUYPOWER player is banned from every competition sanctioned by Valve for life. This is due to a match-fixing scandal he was involved in back in 2014. At the time, he was only 17 years old.
Lazarus’ roster seems to finally have five members once again. The North American team, however, will have to adapt in order to compete in the closed qualifier for the Berlin Major. Initially, Canadians Pujan “FNS” Mehta and Tyson “TenZ” Ngo will stand in lieu of Swag and yay. The roster of Lazarus after the Major closed qualifier, therefore, would reportedly be the following:
- Braxton “swag” Pierce
- Jordan “Zellsis” Montemurro
- Gage “Infinite” Green
- Yassine “Subroza” Taoufik
- Jaccob “yay” Whiteaker
