It would be fair to say last summer no one predicted a North American League Championship Series spring playoff matchup between Team Dignitas and Phoenix1.
For starters, Phoenix1 at the time was the laughingstock of the league. In an interview with ESPN.com last June, Team Liquid AD carry Chae "Piglet" Gwang-jin said it was "disheartening" to watch P1, as the rookie organization failed to take a single best-of-three in the first half of the 2016 summer split.
Dignitas can even one-up P1's remarkable turnaround: It wasn't even in LCS when P1 was failing to pick up wins last summer. A mainstay of the NA LCS since its beginnings in 2013, the longstanding but overall fruitless organization was finally relegated from the league last year. After a partnership blossomed with the Philadelphia 76ers, the familiar color combination of black and yellow made it back into the NA LCS. Apex Gaming, the seventh-place club from the 2016 summer split, was absorbed and rebranded as Dignitas.
During the offseason between summer of last year and the current spring campaign, both teams spent heavily in the free-agent market, and they began this season with teams built around stars from South Korea. For P1, it was two former KT Rolster members in marksman Noh "Arrow" Dong-hyeon and 2016 worlds semifinalist starting mid laner Yoo "Ryu" Sang-ook. Dignitas put its faith in another former KT player, Kim "Ssumday" Chan-ho, the ace of the South Korean powerhouse in 2016, and partnered him up with Lee "Chaser" Sang-hyun, a player whose 2016 was best forgotten for his sake, wallowing on the haphazard Longzhu Gaming.
Although in similar situations, the stories of each team diverge from there.
P1 has been a revelation since the start of the season. Arrow and Ryu found little trouble fitting into the starting lineup, and the other parts of the team were switched around them. The early success can be directed toward the players and their grasp of the English language. Ryu, who was on Europe's H2k-Gaming for two years, had already experienced what was needed to succeed in an English-focused squad, and Arrow, who played professionally in South Korea his entire career, came over already able to conduct interviews in English with little help from a translator.
Over the course of the season, Arrow stood out among the rest of the AD carries in the league. Where other players couldn't fit into the long-ranged, utility-style meta of champions that controlled most of the regular season, Arrow fit the meta like a glove, using his trademark Jhin to dissect opposing forces. In a season that was a lot about parity and close contests with the best players at each position, Arrow broke out early in the split and never went away. Compared to other players from South Korean over the years in North America, Arrow is an exception: He was the glue that made sure P1 didn't tear at the seams.
The journey to the playoffs wasn't nearly as smooth for Dignitas. Ssumday was placated in the first couple of weeks. The team would allow him to pick a split-pushing champion, let him do his thing during the game, and cross their fingers that it would turn out well in the end. What happened is what usually happens with South Korean players in the NA LCS: He stood out well the first few games before other teams focused solely on him, and the rest of Dignitas didn't know how to play together to compensate. To make matters worse, Chaser was a non-factor, looking out of place even when Ssumday and the rest of the team had good games. The team wasn't dysfunctional outside of the Rift. But on it? The starting lineup was a mess. No cohesion. No rhythm to its play. Unless Ssumday or sometimes mid laner Jang "Keane" Lae-young carried through the laning phase, the game was routinely over without much fuss by the mid game.
"I trust Keane more than any other player in the world to hold his own when it matters," Dignitas' starting AD carry Benjamin "LOD" deMunck said. "It feels really good to have a teammate like him. If I'm ever having an off game, he'll just show up and carry me."
Those occurrences started happening less and less in the second part of the season. Dignitas removed its South Korean coaching staff and replaced them with David "Cop" Robinson. The move sparked a change in the team's play over the coming weeks. Keane and Ssumday would still have their games when they took over, but now they weren't doing it alone, and the rest of the team learned how to play around each other. It was no longer Ssumday playing by himself -- it was now Dignitas playing around Ssumday, or Ssumday playing around Keane or LOD.
Where P1's South Korean players had a strong understanding of English from the get-go, it took time for Dignitas' new squad to acclimate and learn the language at a respectable level. Chaser and Ssumday put in the work and time to get better at English, and the results back up their work ethic: Dignitas went from relegation-bound to a playoff spot in the matter of a few weeks.
Phoenix1 hasn't had issues with its South Korean, but it has had its fair share of problems. Where Dignitas changed out its coaching staff, P1 has had to juggle the jungle and support positions. Emergency substitute William "Meteos" Hartman was supposed to be only a fill-in for a single weekend -- he wasn't even practicing seriously at the time -- and played so well from that weekend on that he has muscled his way into the starting lineup and conversation as one of the best junglers this split. In the bottom lane, starting support Adrian "Adrian" Ma left the team unceremoniously and was replaced, coincidentally, by Dignitas' substitute support William "Stunt" Chen.
This is a series about two clubs who would probably tell you you've seen nowhere near their ceiling. Dignitas has been a different team since Cop took over, and the team's improvements (and lack thereof) in the late game should improve even more in the coming summer season when Ssumday and Chaser have more time to learn English. P1 could have gotten a top-two spot and a quarterfinal bye, but the team's constant changes might have stopped them from getting the last push to overcome C9 or TSM in the regular-season standings.
No matter the winner, the victor will have a story to tell for a lifetime. Either Phoenix1 can say it made a semifinal after being considered a joke of an organization just under a year ago, or Dignitas can point at a 76ers logo and laugh, "Trust the process."
This opening quarterfinal matchup will take place on Saturday at 6 p.m. ET from the LCS Arena in Los Angeles.