Winning the biggest prize in esports back-to-back should probably count for something, and since OG took down Team Liquid in an anticlimactic final at The International 9 there have been a lot of nice words written about them. At this point in Dota’s short history, it is pretty fair to call them the greatest team of all time, but for this writer they are also just the ultimate Dota team, with a story that perfectly encapsulates the overall history of the greatest MOBA ever made.

Flash back a little over twelve months ago, to the first occasion that NoTail, ana, Ceb, Topson and Jerax happened to find themselves with millions of new dollars suddenly appearing in their bank accounts. The team had not been in great form coming into the event, but it seemed as though something clicked for them, and their performance showed how comfortable they were in their skins. The PSG.LGD team they faced down that day is one of the greatest in Chinese Dota history, but OG outlasted them at TI8.

When TI9 came around, OG looked perhaps even better than they had at the previous iteration, taking down Newbee, PSG, Evil Geniuses and then Team Liquid in the final, never dropping a series to send them to the lower bracket. As fans will know though, the time between those two moments of gold was a difficult one for the team, and the way they reformed like Voltron to take down the Dota world both highlights the brilliance of the scene, and the way OG have exposed the fundamental flaw in Dota’s season.

Or, to put it another way, it is the only thing that matters. As the experts on Twitter watched the TI9 final, there was a flurry of speculation, noise and exposition on what was the crucial factor. People trying to be intelligent rejected the obvious – that ana was the difference –, but even that obvious answer might have a more complicated genesis, as ana is to OG what OG are to Dota. In short, he, and maybe OG now, only really seem to play the game for The International.