Coach Yeo "TrAce" Chang-dong places his hand on Jo "CoreJJ" Yong-in's shoulder, giving the support player a slight squeeze before turning to KSV eSports head coach Choi "Edgar" Woo-beom. Edgar nods and smiles slightly before patting the arm of mid laner Lee "Crown" Min-ho.
Crown is despondent. With his head buried in his arms, he hides his face from the OnGameNet cameras. He wipes away the tears from his eyes with a sloppy sweep of his arm. As Edgar walks away, Crown buries his face in his hands again, sobbing.
"This was supposed to be the year that KSV got over their world championship and were able to win on Korean soil," caster Christopher "Papasmithy" Smith said.
"This is definitely one of the most brutal reactions we've seen," Seth "Achilios" King responded, "as KSV gets denied from the playoffs essentially."
"It's the culmination of 18 best-of-threes, of so much criticism sent the way of KSV by everyone involved," Papasmithy said. "And you can understand that Crown, one of the people who has received most of it is feeling the raw emotion of all of those months of preparation [that] may mean nothing, will likely mean nothing. It seems like KSV will have to retool for summer season. They were the first squad to ever keep their world championship lineup together."
None of the KSV players moves from their seats. Crown's head is still in his hands, his shoulders wracked with sobs that shake his entire body. AD carry Park "Ruler" Jae-hyuk is the first to start packing up his equipment. Top laner Lee "CuVee" Seong-jin follows suit. Jungler Kang "Ambition" Chan-yong and CoreJJ seem frozen in their seats -- Ambition stares, unfocused, into the crowd while CoreJJ taps his hands together mindlessly over his keyboard.
As an audience, we are not privy to the moment that KSV make playoffs. It occurs off-screen, hours later, when the Jin Air Green Wings beat the ROX Tigers 2-1, gifting KSV a playoff spot. KSV may have been ecstatic at the second chance or still tempered by the disappointing loss to Kingzone DragonX that capped off a discouraging regular season. Squeezing into the playoffs courtesy of another matchup was not the way the 2018 LoL Champions Korea Spring Split was supposed to go for this 2017 World Championship lineup.
The rumors start before the six members of Samsung Galaxy lift the 2017 Summoner's Cup at the Bird's Nest in Beijing, sweeping SK Telecom T1 in what was the first World Championship loss in the telecom giant's history.
Samsung was pulling out of League of Legends.
Samsung didn't want to sponsor a team anymore.
KSV eSports, a relatively new esports organization known for its purchase of renowned South Korean Overwatch team Lunatic Hai, was looking for a League of Legends team. Its top two choices were 2017 LCK Summer Champion Longzhu Gaming or 2017 World Champion Samsung Galaxy. On Nov. 30, 2017, KSV acquired the latter.
The former Samsung roster -- CuVee, Ambition, jungler Kang "Haru" Min-seung, Ruler and CoreJJ -- had a surprising amount to prove to the LCK faithful. Although they were world champions -- and had to go through the two other South Korean teams, SKT and Longzhu, to earn that title -- they also never won an LCK championship. Despite strong performances in the qualifying gauntlet in 2016 and 2017, this Samsung roster always failed to make it past Round 3 in the LCK playoff gauntlet. In their first season together, they failed to even make it into the 2016 LCK Spring playoffs while the upstart Afreeca Freecs slid into a fifth-place spot.
Upon returning to the LCK in 2018 as world champions, this was KSV's split to prove that they could win not only on the world stage, but in the hyper-competitive environment of South Korea's professional league. KSV started the season fairly strong, but plummeted in the standings mid-split and eventually had to rely on the Jin Air Green Wings to push them into the playoffs.
With a world championship under its belt, it's easy to forget that this lineup was not expected to make 2017 Worlds -- or 2016 Worlds, for that matter -- and shocked the LCK by defeating KT Rolster. When the team was first assembled in early 2016, not much was expected of them at all. CuVee was not the same player that he is today, Crown was returning from a brief and unsuccessful stint in Brazil, and Ambition was not yet a strong jungler. The lineup pulled together with superior coordination, Ambition's improvement, and Crown's mid lane dominance, aided at the very end of the season by the eradication of lane-swaps, which allowed CoreJJ's laning prowess to shine.
At both the 2016 and 2017 World Championships, KSV's strength was in its ability to adapt. In 2016, Ambition admitted that their loss to Team SoloMid in groups helped them realize that comfort picks were better in the best-of-one format. The team adjusted accordingly. Coupled with strong 5v5 teamfighting and Crown's continued dominion over the mid lane, their early adaptations took them all the way to the World Championship finals. In 2017, members of Samsung credited Royal Never Give Up for teaching them to focus more on the bottom lane. This advice and practice helped the team sweep expected Worlds finalists Longzhu Gaming in the quarterfinals before taking down SKT and claiming the title as their own in the finals.
The current KSV lineup benefits from time and adaptation, especially when individual players are underperforming. Crown shouldered the brunt of criticism because the team struggled to find a pick that gave him mid priority, an invaluable asset for any team. The loss of mid priority meant that Haru, a jungler who favors more aggressive invades, will struggle whenever he starts. Ambition looked out-of-sync with KSV's lanes in the middle of the split, his power-farming style becoming more costly for the team as they picked scaling matchups that didn't push and slowly lost.
KSV rallied a bit when they found Vel'koz for Crown, but faltered again when teams banned it away from him. Their performance against Kingzone was surprisingly good and proved that KSV still has the capability to win against top tier opponents, but may need a bit more time to adjust. With less than a week before facing off against SKT in a wild-card matchup, it still has something left to prove.