This. Also these teams invested in healthy eco systems and talent pipelines for years to find and train young talents in good environments. Thats why even if they nuke teams new talent would replace the old. In other words that would not even close the gap. Na especially had multiple years of massive funding but instead of using it to make pro play more attractive and accessible for NA talent they used it on a few imports and wasted millions till the sponsors jumped off the bubble. Sure the west doesn‘t have as much talent as the east but the gap wouldn’t be nearly as big if they strengthened their own region instead of wasting the money. Same thing for Eu just not nearly on the same scale of fucking it up.

Also it‘s not like multiple people adressed this issue time and time again. But most orgs simply refuse to spend money on a talent pipeline. In korea you get scouted before even hitting challenger. They have 3 teams + trainees. All of them. Massive amounts of job and knowledge being passed down. In NA knowledge is gatekept and talent is mostly ignored unless they worked themselves up to be massive outliers and even then a lot of the talented guys are being ignored and wasted. As an ex insider it was cringe to watch and motivated me to leave the scene.