NEW YORK -- Walking out of Madison Square Garden onto the chilly New York streets Saturday morning, the only way I could express the spectacle of the League of Legends World Championships semifinal between defending champion SK Telecom T1 and reigning South Korean champion ROX Tigers was with a simple smile.
SKT T1 and its prodigy ringleader, Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok, had just overcome an unprecedented Miss Fortune curveball ROX threw at them, advancing to next week's finals in five games by the skin of their teeth.
Later that same day, exiting the Garden following Samsung Galaxy's thrashing of H2k in the second semifinal (which went half as long as the first), my thoughts were still swimming of the series I had witnessed less than 24 hours earlier.
Out of the two semis in New York this weekend, one delivered while the other was a lopsided snoozefest in which the MSG crowd partook in the wave and endless chanting of "T-S-M!" -- a team, mind you, that didn't even make it out of the group stages -- to appease its boredom from the expected South Korean dominance.
Regardless of how trite the semifinals as a whole might have ended, it didn't matter: SKT T1, the Tigers, and Friday night made it all worth it -- and then some.
At that point it was clear: we witnessed the best match we'll see at the World Championships; not only at the 2016 edition, but in the entire legacy of the tournament. ROX and SKT T1 played a best-of-five series that was worthy of being a final in any league in the world.
And it was obvious SKT T1 knew that, too. Usually when SK Telecom wins -- even if it's a major championship -- you rarely see much reaction on the players' faces. To the contrast of the ROX Tigers' fun loving, boisterous personalities, SKT T1 is seen as the cold, business-like surgeons that personify the methodical South Korean League of Legends style. However, this time, after SKT T1 completed their comeback from a 2-1 deficit to finally eliminate their greatest rival from the tournament, even Faker broke into a smile, the team converging into a sequence of hugs and laughter as they realized their defense of the Summoner's Cup would move onto the final stage in Los Angeles this Saturday.
No disrespect to the two teams that took the stage Saturday night -- South Korean club Samsung Galaxy dispatching Europe's fiery H2k, 3-0 -- but the real Summoner's Cup Final might have been played the night before.
After two years without a playoff series at Worlds going the distance, the fans on Friday night received the best possible match to end the drought.
In the first game, SKT T1 and Faker flexed their muscles to put the Tigers, the current domestic champion of South Korea, in their place with a lopsided victory.
The next two games, though, it would be the Tigers getting the jump on SKT T1 with a never-before-seen Champion pick that shook SKT T1 to its core. In a move that no one -- and if you say you did, please tell me some lottery numbers pronto -- saw coming, the Tigers chose an unprecedented ultra-aggressive composition with two marksmen in the bottom lane at once, in place of using a traditional support. Kang "GorillA" Beom-hyeon played the AD carry Miss Fortune in the "support" role while Kim "PraY" Jong-in settled on his signature Ashe.
Imagine the Houston Texans playing J.J. Watt at tight end or a right-handed pitcher suddenly throwing lefty, or the San Antonio Spurs playing five seven-footers. Faker said after the match he had not seen Miss Fortune used in that fashion in any professional match in his career.
The risky decision worked like a charm and ROX easily won both early games in commanding fashion, and SKT T1 were not able to adjust to the double-marksmen bot lane for Games 2 and 3.
PraY on Ashe would slice the air with the perfect arrow to freeze a target in place, then GorillA would let loose with Miss Fortune's barrage of bullets from her ultimate. The Tigers didn't miss a beat with this strategy, and they accomplished what they had to do to make it work: never stop moving forward. If the paper-thin composition had stopped rolling at any time during the game, SKT T1 could have caught their bearings, defended a bit, and then held on until the late game where SKT T1 would have won in spades. Instead, the Tigers would jab, move to another part of the map, take another large swing at SKT T1, and then follow that up with another brash play. For every one stop SKT T1 made on the map, the Tigers would make five plays to top the failed attempt.
Predictably, SKT T1 banned Miss Fortune from play in Games 4 and 5, opening the door for a comeback. SKT T1's rookie jungler Kang "Blank" Sun-gu lost both games he played in the middle of the series, and he was rotated out for the actual starter of the night, Bae "Bengi" Seong-woong, the two-time world champion veteran that started the match with a victory before being subbed out.
Faker was his usual godly self, which is great for SKT T1. Generally, when Faker plays at that level, SKT T1 wins. Except, against ROX, a team that is just as good as SKT T1 and even better in some aspects, Faker winning his lane every game wasn't enough to bring them victory. It took Bengi, the maligned, often cast-aside jungler, to come in to be the hero that not only SKT T1 needed on the night, but the one they deserved. Bengi returned from his two-game benching in Game 4 with his team's back firmly against the wall. He picked Nidalee, a strong champion to be fair, but one he had never played in his long history as a jungler.
Ice in his veins. Bengi played like a man possessed in the final two games, and the Tigers couldn't contain both Faker and Bengi at their best. At the end of the deciding Game 5, when ROX was on its deathbed, SKT T1 didn't let up. Faker and Bengi, the two coldest gunslingers in the wild west, put down one of their greatest rivals, and they embraced as the packed Madison Square Garden crowd appreciated their greatness.
Not Faker's greatness -- their greatness.
To the Tigers, who never stopped, be it attacking or singing, this is their end. While it remains to be seen what the future holds in the offseason, Friday night, like all the others, they will leave wondering what they need to do rid themselves of the demon that is SK Telecom T1.
The only thing left to be said is from ROX's Song "Smeb" Kyung-ho, who talked about his teammates -- what his friends meant to him before the tournament began:
"I don't know how to describe the members of the Tigers," said Smeb. "Family, friends, I could describe my teammates that way. The things I don't show my family, the things I don't show my friends -- there are those things -- but I can show those things to them. It's hard to describe, but I don't think I'll ever have a team like this again. The people who let me comfortably show the best that I can play. I'm so lucky to have come to where I am. I think I'm so lucky to have met these teammates. While they are players with tremendous skill, even without their abilities, they are really good people with whom I am fortunate enough to have shared and pursued a dream."
No, Smeb. We were lucky. We were lucky to watch you to fight for that dream.