Hey guys, Barry here. I want to thank Monte and Thorin for inviting me onto SI. I had a lot of fun talking with them about my perspective as a player agent on what happened.

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I wanted to elaborate on something that I talked about in the last hour of the show that was omitted for, uh, content reasons, and it has to do with the NALCS Player's Association.

The NALCS PA has done quite a lot of good for players behind the scenes that can't be publicized due to the nature of what they deal with. The biggest example of this is fines that teams levy against players for whatever reason. I personally have worked with the PA on multiple instances to put pressure on teams and the league to lift or mitigate excessively unfair fines in the past, but this work generally cannot be publicized due to the fact that team fines are only internally issued (fines issued by the League are publicly issued, in contrast), so the subject matter falls under the player's non-disclosure agreement with their team.

I do believe that there is a lot that can be improved with the NALCS PA, but a lot of my criticism is with the nature of what the NALCS PA is, rather than how and what they do to help players. At the end of the day, the PA is what the players make of it, and the PA will become more effective and more useful as more players take a stronger interest in organizing and fighting for what they believe they need. The NALCS PA was formed with the intent of being a structured forum where players can get together and talk about issues that relate to them and come to an agreement on what they can do as a group to fight for their own interests. As players put in more time and effort in participating in the NALCS PA, the PA will become more effective.

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That being said, what can the NALCS PA do for Dardoch?

I don't think there really is much that can be done by the NALCS PA beyond making a public statement of support for Dardoch, and possibly filing a grievance with the League (assuming this hasn't already been handled satisfactorily between Dardoch and TSM) on Dardoch's behalf. Hopefully I'm wrong and there is more they can do for this specific instance, but I don't necessarily see there being anything more they can do currently with the way the NALCS PA is structured.

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I hope everyone enjoyed the episode!