The first match in the third week of competition for T1 was a clash against Nongshim RedForce – a team performing quite well with 3 wins and 1 loss (prior to this match), firmly sitting in second place on the LCK Summer 2021 leaderboard at this moment. Meanwhile, T1 has been showing rather inconsistent form with 2 wins and 2 losses. Notably, their most bitter defeat was against Liiv SANDBOX – a team considered to be much weaker.
And the first game between the two teams left both the audience and the commentators feeling extremely tense as well as… exhausted. Only in the first game of the best of 3 series, T1 and NS dragged the match to a whopping 70 minutes, concluding only after NS secured their second Elder Dragon (and the third of the game), along with Baron buff and mega minions at all three lanes. At the end of the game, Faker’s farm reached over 600 minions.
Game 1 of the match between T1 and NS is also noted as the 7th longest game in LCK history. And on the day of their 0-2 defeat against NS, T1 also set another “unprecedented” record: being the team with the most games lasting the longest in LCK, with a total of 4 out of 7 matches. Among these, the longest game in LCK history and also for T1 was the encounter with Jin Air Green Wings in Spring 2018, lasting a total of 90 minutes and 40 seconds.
With the defeat against NS, T1 has now faced 2 consecutive losses. However, fans are still confident that Faker’s team will end this poor streak in the third week, as their remaining match will be against DragonX – a team currently performing very poorly with 4 straight losses and sitting at the bottom of the Spring 2021 leaderboard.