Since last spring, Team Liquid is 18-2 in the LCS Playoffs. Despite regular seasons that looked shaky or middling at times, they’ve managed to gallop past all would-be challengers when the pressure has been highest. Leading the way for them is Doublelift, who has won every single split he’s started in dating back to Summer 2016. They opened this split to the tune of a 14-1 record before faltering down the stretch, but recovered in the Semifinal to look exactly like what you’d expect from the two-time reigning champion. All of this paints the picture of a titan. And yet when I think of what it means to be a “winner” in the LCS — when I think about which team feels like they’re at the top, it is always, without fail, TSM. Here’s 10 thoughts going into this week’s final between the two teams that have combined to win the last five LCS titles.

1. The case for Liquid



The title here sounds like a PowerPoint deck trying to convince gamers that water is actually good for you (it is). One of my rules in any competition is that if the defending champion can return to the title match, then they are de facto the favorite to win it again. I realize things change in terms of rosters and whatnot, but to me there is the champion and then there are the challengers, and Liquid is a two-time reigning champion that also happened to add Jensen (1st Team All-Pro) and CoreJJ (Worlds champion) to their roster in the offseason. I don’t know if people just forgot how insane that is. I actually tuned into Jensen’s stream a couple nights ago and thought, “I guess he has more time to stream now that C9 is out.” I watched for like 10 minutes before remembering he was on Team Liquid now. Of course I’ve also talked to people recently who are convinced TSM is the favorite and that anything short of TSM victory here would be a huge upset! How in the world do you figure that! TL is, again, 18-2 in the Playoffs since Doublelift joined the roster. Over six sets, they haven’t even lost enough games to lose one set. TSM fans of all people should know that Playoffs are just different. They watched their team make it to the Finals 10 straight times no matter what happened in the regular season. This split TL was the #1 team in the regular season, and they just destroyed the #4 team — until Doublelift actually loses again, peg TL as the favorite. The horse is going for the triple crown.





2. The case for TSM

Honestly I could just put “TSM” here like three times and have nothing else and someone out there would still read it and be like, “Yes.” This matchup kind of reminds me of when Golden State would play against Cleveland in the NBA Finals all those years in a row — both teams were stacked, yes, but you’d say GSW were always the more stacked team, whereas Cleveland had the best player on the court in LeBron. In this particular case, Bjergsen feels kind of like LeBron. In reverse sweeping Cloud9, Bjergsen managed to die literally not even once in their three victories. You don’t even need to put that into perspective. He just actually played out of his mind. I could load onto the Summoner’s Rift and AFK in the fountain for the entire game and probably still wind up dying somehow. Much of the hoopla this week will be around who the greatest player of all time in NA is — is it Bjergsen? Doublelift? Hai? Who can say. (Someone is going to take that last bit too seriously). But if I am a TSM fan, then I am throwing all my stock into Bjergsen. Their playoff run hasn’t been as hot as how they ended the regular season, but it’s been enough to get them to St. Louis — their 11th Finals appearance — and for all the Playoff success TL has had over the last year, they haven’t actually had to play TSM yet.



3. Jensen’s lonely quest for victory

The player under the most pressure this week is Jensen, and I don’t think it’s even close. He left Cloud9, a team that molded itself to play around him for four years, to join the team that knocked him out of the LCS Playoffs both times last year. And unlike his teammates, he’s never won a single thing in his career. No individual hardware. No team accolades. He’s just been close over and over again. There have been big wins, sure, but the sense of finishing and realizing there are no more games left to play — the feeling of going out “on top” has eluded him. And none of this is really meant as a knock against him either — I think he’s proven that he belongs in the same conversation as Bjergsen when it comes to individual skill at least. The intangibles like clutchness or whatever are kind of difficult to actually measure, and at least making it to Semifinals at Worlds is a terrific accomplishment. But I’m guessing the first win moment — where you’re able to stay on stage and let the confetti decorate you — would mean more to him than he can really understand. Until you actually win something, there is only the idea of winning. It’s not until you actually win that you understand not just what it feels like, but what it takes to get there. And Jensen stands, for the fourth time in his career, just three wins away from getting there.





4. Zven’s quiet maturation

At one point in 2017, if you’d said Zven was the best overall player in the West, you’d have found a lot of people who’d have agreed with you (especially across the pond). Now we enter a Final — between just two teams — where he might just barely sneak in as the 5th best player. I don’t know if I’d call it a fall from grace necessarily, but since coming to NA he not only missed Worlds last year but watched his long-time lane partner mithy get roasted by the community and then return to Europe. I am reminded of an action flick where the main character’s best friend or love interest dies, so he lights a cigarette and says something dramatic like “I’ll see you soon, partner.” Then he’s blown up after transmitting the schematics of the Death Star. Something like that. Anyway, what I am trying to say is that Zven could very well be the best player in this series, and to anyone that’s followed his career for a while, that would not be a surprise. In the three wins over C9, Zven only died twice to sport a 24.5 KDA — it wasn’t just the Bjergsen show. A card pitting him against Doublelift is one that pits two legends against each other, and Zven has the chance to become the first player ever to win both an EU and an NA Championship.

5. Tale of two junglers



Akaadian has played in nine playoff games. Xmithie has played in 76 playoff games and 61 international games. If experience matters at a stage like this (it does), then Xmithie, who has more games played than any other jungler in the LCS by a healthy margin, is an old man compared to the baby that is Akaadian. Xmithie plays the best supportive style of jungle in the LCS in that he’s very good at making sure you don’t get crushed by the enemy laner or jungler. This is a style that’s more effective when you have laners that can win naturally on their own and less effective when you need to be the proactive player. But in TSM’s two victories over TL this split, Akaadian was absolutely the more effective player, and he was able to strike before Xmithie could answer. It’s been repeated by multiple people, including Doublelift, that TSM’s style counters TL. Basically I think that means TSM is good at breaking through the more defensive TL line. If you think about it like a game of tennis, TL is the one returning and waiting for TSM to make an unforced error, whereas TSM is trying to hit the ball to a spot TL can’t get to. In both of the games they’ve played, that spot has been top lane, and it’s been Bjergsen outroaming Jensen to make a critical early play in a side lane. If TL is going to win this, then Xmithie is going to need to defend Impact better, and Jensen is going to need to contain Bjergsen more. And if TSM is to win, then they need to continue applying the pressure — being baited into a “safe” style or a slower tempo would be the end of them.