It takes a second.

Song “Smeb” Kyung-ho had already chosen Karma as one of the ROX Tigers’ first picks. Jungler Han “Peanut” Wang-ho locks in Kim “PraY” Jong-in’s Ashe — the veteran AD carry’s legacy champion of the past two years. Now, in 2016, he calls upon the Frost Archer once more, down 0-1 to SK Telecom T1. This gives the Tigers a strong 2v2 bottom lane against SKT’s later choices of Ezreal and Zyra.

For their last pick, SKT chooses Viktor, denying the champion from Tigers mid laner Lee “KurO” Seo-haeng. A second later, Tigers support Kang “GorillA” Beom-hyeon locks in Miss Fortune. The pick is so quick that the commentators and SKT are audibly and visibly caught off-guard.

It only takes a second and their expectations of Tigers’ entire draft are subverted.

“They actually have done—” Riot caster Joshua “Jatt” Leesman interrupts himself, changing his commentary mid-sentence. “Something really weird. I don’t care about my last point.” His voice nearly cracks. The Madison Square Garden crowd roars.

GorillA is grinning — not one of his larger, toothy smiles for the camera, but an almost-smirk that’s just for him and his teammates. Riot Games’ camera crew quickly zooms in over his computer to get a better look at the Tigers’ support. The camera itself seems shocked, scrambling for a shot of the player who is about to play support Miss Fortune in the World Championship semifinals against rival SKT. When GorillA refuses to cooperate — no wide smile, not a word to his teammates, just a grin — the camera focuses on PraY, who is chattering loudly, laughing as he shakes his hand-warmer.

“It has to be support MF,” color caster Mitch “Krepo” Voorspoels says. The statement has an incredulous tone. “Support Ashe sucks.”

“When we first saw Miss Fortune, we were actually very happy," SKT top laner Lee “Duke” Ho-seong says after the series. "We were pretty excited, because we thought it must be a mis-pick or something.”

Far from a mis-pick, Miss Fortune is just what the Tigers need to shut down SKT support Lee “Wolf” Jae-wan’s Zyra and take full control of the bottom lane — a crucial part of the forced standard lane metagame. PraY initiates on Ashe and GorillA follows up with surprising amounts of damage alongside his AD carry partner. After two straight ROX Tigers wins in Games 2 and 3, GorillA’s Miss Fortune is banned by SKT in Games 4 and 5. This ban is an important component of SKT’s eventual 3-2 victory.

GorillA is the first to greet SKT. With a genuine smile, he steps forward, meeting his bot lane opponent, Wolf. Shaking the SKT support’s hand, GorillA pulls Wolf into a quick hug before moving onto the next SKT member, Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok. His poise gives other members of the Tigers time to collect themselves before congratulating their long-time adversaries. Peanut is despondent, momentarily collapsing onto his keyboard, his head in his hands.

Despite the loss, this is the Tigers’ series — one final swan’s song before their impending breakup scatters the organization’s founding members among various Korean teams in the 2016-17 offseason. This past World Championship delivered the most competitive final in the tournament’s history, but it’s this series between the Tigers and SKT that will be remembered for years to come. GorillA put his own personal stamp on 2016 Worlds, just like he has in all of his World Championship appearances.

GorillA is one of the best support players both in his home region of Korea and the world. This past year marks his third time at the League of Legends World Championship — twice with the team he helped found, the Tigers, and once with NaJin White Shield. Every appearance on the Worlds stage brings another innovative or off-beat champion from the support that is recognized or picked up by his peers. In 2014, Janna. In 2015, Tahm Kench. In 2016, Miss Fortune.

Yet, GorillA flies under the radar in Korea and abroad. He remains overshadowed by the likes of Cho “Mata” Se-hyeong in community reverence and Hong “MadLife” Min-gi in popularity. Many of his strengths are pesky-to-define intangibles — leadership, experience, a calm nature — but his staying power is impressive, and he has a surprising ability to adapt, despite his history of focusing on only one or two champions per season.

All eyes are on the top lane in the HOT6IX Champions Spring 2014 Semifinals series between NaJin White Shield and CJ Entus Blaze. Until Spring 2014, NaJin Shield were NaJin Black Sword’s less-popular sister team — a blip on the international League of Legends community’s radar, briefly mentioned when they accompanied Sword to the Season 3 World Championships as a practice partner. Now they are on the rise while Sword, stuck in a group with the KT Rolster Bullets and Samsung Galaxy Blue, fail to make it into the Round of Eight.

The series is a clash of similar playstyles — minion control and split-pushing to spread opponents across the map and diffuse their aggression. Blaze are piloted by the one and only Lee “Flame” Ho-jong, a master of freezing the lane, out-farming his opponent, and split-pushing. His adversary on this day is Shield’s Baek “Save” Young-jin, who has mastered Teleport on Shyvana so well that casters and fans call a Shyvana teamfight flank, “pulling a Save.” Blaze are dubbed the “one-trick warhorse” by English language casters Christopher “MonteCristo” Mykles and Erik “DoA” Lonnquist, a moniker that catches up with them in this series. Shield are defined by the term “winions,” closing out games with impeccable slow-pushes while the team members themselves draw attention elsewhere on the map. The matchup to watch is Flame against Save.

"I think if you had to pick out a weak link on NaJin White Shield it would be GorillA,” MonteCristo says. “He does have a relatively small champion pool and makes positional errors at times."

On a team known for their strong minion control, flanking carry top laner, and the rise of their mid laner Yu “Ggoong” Byeong-jun, GorillA fades into the background. He doesn’t land in the top five KDAs for supports that season, and is known as a Thresh-only player. The sign in front of his computer reads, “Keep Calm and Crescendo,” a reference to his Sona play from the previous split.

After falling behind 0-2, Blaze fights their way back, taking Shield to all five possible games in the series. Game 5 is a dominant Blind Pick victory for Shield that keeps Blaze from their first OGN Spring final in their history. Save collapses in his chair, crying, while the team swarms around him. GorillA is crowned MVP for his 0/2/14 Thresh — pushing him momentarily into the limelight alongside Shield’s rising stars, Ggoong and Save. “Move over MadLife,” DoA jokes during GorillA’s MVP highlight reel. “It’s actually so impressive for a support player on Thresh to make plays like that all game and only die twice.”

“Well, our bot lane has zero MVP points this season,” GorillA jokes in the postmatch interview. “So I was like, ‘We’ve gotta do something guys.’” He laughs. “I’m exhilarated that I was able to be the turning point in such an important game.”

Going into their finals series against Samsung Blue, the second-most banned champion against Shield is GorillA’s Thresh at 17.8 percent, outdone only by LeBlanc at 20 percent. Shield falls 3-1 to Blue in the finals, unable to go toe-to-toe with their superior teamfighting. Their one MVP victory goes to Ggoong, whose highlights belong just as much to GorillA’s Thresh as they do to Ggoong’s LeBlanc. GorillA is always quietly playing in the shadows, doing everything he can to help his team succeed.

Months later, Shield are on the brink of elimination. After failing to make it past the HOT6IX Champions Summer 2014 quarterfinals in a close 3-2 defeat to the KT Rolster Arrows, Shield must beat the KT Rolster Bullets, the Arrows, and Season 3 World Champions SK Telecom T1 K in the 2014 Regional Finals in order to qualify for the World Championship. To everyone’s surprise, Shield nearly runs the table undefeated, putting together an impressive 9-1 run through the qualifier on the back of jungler Cho “watch” Jae-geol, who pulls out a career performance.

The booth erupts after SKT T1 K’s nexus falls in Game 4. Members of Shield clamber out of their chairs, pushing them aside as they envelop each other in hugs and jump in celebration. As the coaches rush into the booth, jumping and yelling along with their players, GorillA stands off to the side for a moment, fanning himself with his hands and watching his team with a broad smile.

His support play continues to improve. He brings out Janna in the qualifier to accompany his Thresh and would later declare that he wants to be the player who first plays the Storm’s Fury at the 2014 World Championship.

On September 18, 2014, that honor goes to the Taipei Assassins’ Li “Jay” Chieh. At 69.7 percent, Janna becomes the ninth most picked or banned champion at 2014 Worlds — the second-highest champion in overall games played at 45 — with a strong 62.2 percent win rate.

Watch’s — and therefore Shield’s — magic runs out during group stages. His early ganks are often ineffective, and Shield finds themselves fighting their way out of a deficit more often than they would like. Their group stage performance includes a shocking perfect game loss at the hands of Europe’s first seed, Alliance.

“Our entire team was pretty shocked,” GorillA says in a broadcast interview. “Rather than just practicing, we talked a lot about how we can come back from this. There is this bigger pressure to win.”

GorillA helps drag his lagging team out of groups. In their second game against Alliance, watch is once again outplayed by Ilyas “Shook” Hartsema. Alliance wins the early game and have pressure in all of their lanes. GorillA’s Thresh is the deciding factor that turns the tide in Shield’s favor. Landing hook after hook, GorillA levels the playing field by feeding his team individual picks, follows up with vision, and controls teamfights.

“GorillA played out of his mind,” Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng says after the game. “The game-winning plays, the ones that turned around, gave NaJin White Shield avenues to get back in the game, getting dragon, getting towers, it was all GorillA that hit those magic hooks.”

Shield manage to make it out of Group D along with North America’s Cloud9 and face China’s Oh My God in the quarterfinals. At times Shield looks like the fantastic, split-pushing threat that they were in 2014 Spring and throughout the gauntlet; however, they always make at least one crucial error — a lack of Baron vision in Game 1, poor drafts that over-prioritize Ggoong’s Zed — if not a myriad of mistakes leading to their demise.

OMG, momentarily bolstered by the substitution of Hu “Cloud” Zhenwei for Fang “DaDa7” Hongri, run roughshod over Shield with superior teamfighting and drafting. Come Game 3, it’s Cloud’s Janna that’s one of the key factors in the OMG win. Despite Shield’s relatively early exit from the 2014 World Championship, GorillA makes a name for himself on the international stage as a phenomenal Thresh player and one of the first supports to bring Janna to the Worlds meta.

By the start of 2015, it seems like ages since GorillA was considered NaJin White Shield’s weak point. After a successful World Championship showing despite Shield’s losses, GorillA is now the focal point of a new Korean organization, the HUYA Tigers, turning down offers from Chinese and North American teams during the 2014-15 Korean Exodus to help create something all his own at home.

“It wasn’t me who first came up with the idea for the Tigers. However, I was the first to receive an offer to build a team around me. That was the Tigers and with me as the focus, we found our coach and the other players and that’s how we were formed,” GorillA says. “At the time when the Tigers first approached me they thought very highly of my skills and when they said that they wanted to make me the focal point of the team I thought, ‘This team really needs me,’ which is why I decided to join.”

“I’m very excited about the potential of this bottom lane,” MonteCristo says before the Tigers’ first-ever professional match. “Will they give GorillA some of those prime champions, Thresh and Janna, that he’s been so threatening on?”

“Well he is going to draw some bans,” DoA says. “Certainly one of the more threatening support players. We saw what he did at Worlds, and it was awesome.”

Paired together with former NaJin Black Sword AD carry PraY, GorillA takes the role of known star on the Tigers since PraY is returning to the game after taking a split off.

HUYA are one of four teams in the first LoL Champions Korea qualifier — the HUYA Tigers, Xenics Modslook, Incredible Miracle, and Prime Clan. They qualify for the upcoming LCK split alongside Incredible Miracle, their play showing promise and surprising amounts of synergy.

GorillA is the center of the Tigers while Smeb evolves into the best top laner in the world and PraY surpasses his previous accomplishments on Sword. The Tigers become known for their peerless team synergy and relaxed environment in addition to their initial rise from the ashes of the Korean Exodus.

“What made our team so special was that our team was a very tight group of players,” GorillA says. “We played with more fun than any other team. At times, we couldn’t control how we felt and we might have gone a bit too far but all of as a team, some of us would bring the team atmosphere up at times and some of us would bring it back down. The balance between players was really good.”

While captaining the Tigers, GorillA’s intangible leadership qualities shine through his every action, in addition to his strong in-game performances. All of the Tigers — including PraY who is older than GorillA and has a longer competitive history — follow GorillA’s lead. In team interviews, GorillA’s slight gestures guide the team, telling them who should respond and when. In the booth, GorillA smiles frequently but yells far less than some of his support peers, including Mata, whose face always seems contorted mid-scream in photographs. In one-on-one interviews, GorillA tends to defer to the team rather than focusing on his individual play, unless specifically asked.

His leadership on the Rift comes in the form of primary initiator or disengage. When GorillA goes in on Alistar, the rest of the Tigers immediately follow. When GorillA stalls out a disadvantageous teamfight with Janna or Trundle, the rest of the Tigers fall back and re-initiate if necessary. The Tigers’ strength, despite their indisputable individual accomplishments and growth, was always their team play with GorillA as the oft-unnoticeable center.

Flexibility may not be the first thing that comes to mind when discussing GorillA’s career. Yet, he began as a known Thresh one-trick pony and evolved into a flexible support player able to stay at the top of Korea and the world for three straight years. Few League of Legends players are able to resist so many meta shifts and remain top-tier competitors.

Rather than looking at GorillA’s champion picks within a specific season — they’re sometimes fewer than his support counterparts and heavily focused on one or two champions — it’s important to take in GorillA’s body of work as a whole from 2014 to 2016.

In 2014, nearly a quarter of GorillA’s games are on Thresh, on which he draws the second-highest percentage of bans for his team in Champions Spring. Thresh is closely followed by Nami at 21 percent of his total games played. Although he only plays Janna five times, he enjoys an 80 percent win rate on the champion and is widely known for bringing her into the spotlight during Shield’s gauntlet run.

Janna replaces Thresh as GorillA’s most-played champion in 2015 — 25 of his total 131 game played or 19 percent. Alistar is his second most-played champion at 11 percent of his games and enjoys a strong 73.3 percent win rate. However, at the 2015 World Championship with the Tigers, GorillA becomes known for his Tahm Kench and carries his support Kennen pick from their LCK Summer 2015 playoff games into the Worlds meta, much like Janna in the previous year.

Again in 2016, GorillA sticks to one main champion — Alistar. He spends almost a third of his total games on Alistar and the Tigers are near unbeatable with a 71 percent Alistar win rate. GorillA’s next most-played champion is Trundle — 18 percent of his total games played and a 78.9 percent win rate — which allows him to disengage and control terrain, further setting up the Tigers’ teamfights. While Samsung Galaxy’s Jo “CoreJJ” Yong-in was rumored to be practicing Miss Fortune support during the 2016 World Championship, it’s GorillA who debuts her against SKT, nearly knocking off their long-time rival on the back of this strong laning pick.

The dust settles on their semifinals loss to SKT. GorillA remains at the front of a line of handshakes. Behind him, Peanut shakes a laughing Duke, as if he can’t believe that his former NaJin e-mFire teammate bested his own team yet again. The Tigers are gutted at the loss, but still courteous in defeat and genuinely happy to be in each others’ presence. GorillA is the most gracious of all, although even his smile drops as he begins to unplug his keyboard. It’s one of the final equipment breakdowns, save the offseason KeSPA Cup, he’ll have with these Tigers teammates aside from his bot lane ally PraY.

The members of the original Tigers are now scattered across various teams. Many of them will face each other in the upcoming competitive split.

“I personally hope that we don’t see another [team] like us,” GorillA admits. “This is because I kind of want to see the Tigers remembered as us five. Since we were so close when we decided to split it was really hard. The 2016 Tigers ended like that but I would like the next year’s Tigers do even better.”

Once again, GorillA has decided to remain in Korea, this time at PraY’s side. The two will compete together under the Longzhu banner starting in LCK Spring 2017. GorillA jokingly calls them Prayrilla — no word on whether this nickname will stick. “I’m not sure how the future will play out,” GorillA says. “ The reason why Prayrilla went to Longzhu was not because of money but because we wanted to play together in Korea still,” he says. “Also, I thought that it would be really nice if we could get good results and recognition together on Longzhu.”

Longzhu have their own unique history of the past year — a so-called super team that never panned out due to a complete lack of synergy. Their members didn’t talk to each other in game. GorillA’s Tigers were so loud, even in practice, that their neighbors complained.

When GorillA left Shield, he was an up-and-coming support who helped create a unique and successful team in the uncertain landscape of post-Exodus Korea. Now, his end with that same team is a memorable one, even in defeat — one of the best, if not the best, series in League of Legends World Championship history. They’ll forever remain a unique beacon of strength through team unity and atmosphere.

Yet, if the legacy of the Tigers will be the 2016 roster, it’s hard to ignore the impact that GorillA had on that team of five. His leadership was a steady presence that kept his sometimes exuberant teammates level, and his adaptability — the trait that kept him on top of his game throughout his career — was in many ways the center around which one of the world’s best teams revolved.

This energy and inspiration is what GorillA will bring to his next team. His adaptability is what will keep him among the best in the world.

Emily Rand is a staff writer for theScore esports. You can follow her on Twitter.