It seems that as we approach the decisive stage, when most results are already in, teams tend to play more liberally, especially those often underestimated. Therefore, even for the so-called “giants”, the final matches of the group stage are very unpredictable. The LCK Spring 2024 is no exception, as Gen.G nearly lost to Dplus KIA, while recently, T1 continued to face difficulties in their match against Nongshim RedForce – a team that seems to have lost all motivation this Spring.
Notably, in Game 2, NS really made T1’s players sweat, especially when NS’s champion Smolder was continuously gaining strength as the match dragged on. Interestingly, a stat after the match showed that if T1 had not completely controlled all the Dragon and Baron buffs early on, no one would know where Game 2 would have led. In terms of damage stats, Smolder alone dealt a whopping 77.7k damage throughout the match. For those who can’t visualize, this number is just slightly higher than the total damage dealt by Zeus and Gumayusi combined.
Furthermore, the number of kills for both sides was quite similar. The gold difference for T1 only came from the number of towers they destroyed. The dominance of Smolder was further maximized when T1 had to eliminate this champion early to win the decisive fight. In fact, according to one viewer: “If we hide all the stats about towers and scores, one would think NS was the team that won this game. Smolder was truly terrifying.”
Many factors contributed to the difficulties T1 faced in the match against NS. However, it cannot be denied that T1’s players approached the game better than they did in their loss to HLE, starting from the draft phase. Nevertheless, real challenges remained, and letting Smolder go free is a prime example. This champion is becoming a “once-in-200-years champion”, but T1 has yet to show that they truly have a way to effectively counter Smolder.