What’s a GOAT to a non-believer? Team Liquid believed only in themselves when they were dropped into an early 0-2 hole against TSM. With the crowd roaring T-S-M and their backs pinned against a long off-season, TL stood strong and showed everyone their resilience. Perhaps more than anyone else, Doublelift has become the player that doesn’t know when to give up. And as TL’s spiritual leader, that has come to embody the team itself. The much hyped roster lived up to their pre-season billing and secured a 3rd consecutive title.

The center of focus coming into this weekend was on Doublelift and Bjergsen, who were tied with five LCS Championships apiece before this match. Analysts pondered back and forth as to which player was North America’s GOAT — was it the steady excellence of Bjergsen in the mid lane, or was it the brash, trash-talking ADC in Doublelift? While this series might not cement the argument for good, the edge in titles is now distinctly Doublelift’s. Say whatever else you want about him, but when the moment is the biggest, he has consistently stepped up and won. And in the last fight, it was him that finished off Bjergsen for good this split.

On that, Doublelift says, “I’d rather be super hungry for my first win than chasing now… title number seven. I get really embarrassed when everyone else says I’m the greatest of all the time. When I said I’m the greatest and everyone else is trash — that was ironic. It was a joke.” He’s more focused now on achieving something at international events.

This was a series of crazy picks, and it all started with Jensen locking in Heimerdinger in Game 1. After both teams combined to ban out eight mid laners (including five from TL), Jensen responded to Bjergsen’s Zoe pick with the donger. It seemed like a prepared counterpick based on the fact that Zoe was a pretty obvious choice for TSM, but the game itself did not pan out favorably.

Jensen was unable to punish the lane phase and then he was unable to do as much in the many skirmishes between the two teams. Bjergsen, however, was able to constantly delay Liquid’s early advances and advantages with critical poke damage and picks on his Zoe. In doing so, Broken Blade was able to scale on Vladimir and become an unstoppable force in the top lane for TSM — his Vladimir racked up 11 kills, which honestly is a lot in a Solo Queue game let alone your first ever LCS Final.

It was a tense back-and-forth affair that foreshadowed the nature of the entire series. When TL would secure an advantage, TSM would bite back. Many fights began with TL generating a pick, but they would then overextend in trying to chase down the retreating TSM team. Bjergsen slowly chipped at them or Vladimir would find a chance to re-engage in a flanking position. Over and over it seemed like TL was just unable to wipe out TSM, and eventually the Vladimir scaled to a position that was impossible for TL to deal with.

Broken Blade carried that momentum into Game 2 and broke open an early stalemate by solo killing Impact’s Kennen with his Irelia. TSM pulled out a super unorthodox Lux pick for Bjergsen (no one has picked Lux in the LCS since 2016), and honestly it was so unorthodox that I’m still not positive it actually happened. Lux is a champion with a lot of weaknesses (like QSS), but Bjergsen managed to make her work. Combined with the new-flavor Sona/Taric bot lane, TSM was a team with a lot of shields and zone control.

The ball of death scaled to a spot that TL simply couldn’t deal with — once Sona and Taric hit the end-game, you have to delete someone quickly or those two could heal them back to full health in a rotation or two of spells. And in a series where the teams were so closely matched, that was just not going to happen. TL could not generate decisive enough team fight wins and were then routed by TSM’s deathball. TSM would find themselves up 2-0 against the strongest team in NA over the last year.