Once in awhile there comes a Cinderella Story that captures everyone's attention as their run was so improbable that it feels like a script out of a movie. You had Leicester City FC in the EPL in 2015-16 that went from 20th the year before and almost being relegated to catapulting themselves ahead of the pact of giants. A truly David and Goliath story, but what makes Leicester FC story even better is that they didn't just upset 1 team but several teams including world class organizations like Manchester United, Arsenal FC, Liverpool FC, and Chelsea FC.
The esports landscape is littered with big organizations everywhere and typically they are the ones that lift the championship every year. Smaller organizations have a tough time competing against the more established as they don't have the experience of the season over season grind. In regions such as the LCK, it feels like there are teams that have been there since the very first split in 2012. The majority of the teams currently in the LCK have been there for awhile with veterans Gen.G (formerly Samsung), KT Rolster, and SK Telecom TI since 2013. Then more recent mainstays Afreeca, bbq Olivers, Hanwha Life Esports (formerly ROX Tigers), Jin Air Green Wings, KINGZONE DragonX (formerly Longzhu Gaming), and MVP since 2016. Other teams have been promoted from Challengers, but they have not been able to stay up in the LCK.
The LCK 2018 Summer Promotion Tournament saw LCK's 9th seed MVP, LCK's 10th seed Kongdoo Monster, CK's 1st seed Griffin, and CK's Spring Playoffs Winner Ever8 Winners battle it out for two spots in the LCK 2018 Summer Split. Griffin joined the Challengers League at the beginning of 2017 and fought to keep their spot after a 3-11 record in CK 2017 Spring. They built on this by going 8-6 in CK 2017 Summer, finishing 4th in the CK 2017 Summer Playoffs. They added Viper (bot laner), Lehends (support), and Chovy (mid laner) for CK 2018 Spring to join originals Sword (top laner), Tarzan (jungler), and Rather (mid laner). This group of 6 went a perfect 14-0 only losing 2 maps the entire season, then they 2-0'd Kongdoo Monster and 3-1'd MVP to secure their spot in LCK 2018 Summer.
Even though they were on a 16 match winning streak in 2018, there was little expectations for this group of 6 LCK rookies as they were about to face world class players such as Faker, Smeb, Pray and GorillA to name a few. They started off the season with one of the easier LCK schedules with wins over Hanwha Life Esports, MVP, and bbq Olivers to wrap up Week 1 with a 3-0 record. This was an impressive start but no one was about to crown them favourites for LCK 2018 Summer as they haven't faced the likes of KINGZONE or Afreeca. The chatter about them slowly started to increase after sweeping Week 2 as well, winning 2-0 against both Jin Air and SKT. These rookies were sitting in 1st place with a perfect 5-0 record and on a 21 match winning streak in 2018. Their 1st opponent of Week 3 was none other than KINGZONE DragonX, back-to-back LCK Champions, and still favourites to win the LCK 2018 Summer Championship. Game 1 started off slow with only 1 kill a piece after 10 minutes, but soon after a fight broke out for the 2nd dragon and Griffin executed their exceptional team fighting winning the fight 3-1 and taking dragon. After this point in the game, it felt like Griffin won every single team fight; ending the game with a 19-4 kill score. Game 2 felt like a continuation of Game 1 as Griffin dominated every part of the map and won every skirmish and every team fight; closing out the game with a 18-3 kill score. Griffin were 6-0 after demolishing KINGZONE and put the league of notice that this was not just a hot start, but they were a set of rookies to be taken seriously. This level of success by a bunch of rookies has not been seen since Faker and SK Telecom T1 busted onto the scene in 2013 and they haven't looked back since then. Their miraculous undefeated run in 2018 finally came to an end when they lost to KT Rolster; ending their winning streak at 22 matches. There is still a lot of the summer split to be played, but no one is taking Griffin lightly anymore and they are serious contenders to compete for a spot at Worlds.
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